


Lessons in Finding Unicorns

by scoradh



Category: Fall Out Boy, Panic! at the Disco
Genre: F/M, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-17
Updated: 2014-03-17
Packaged: 2018-01-16 02:59:17
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 22,066
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1329319
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/scoradh/pseuds/scoradh
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In this story (the bastard lovechild of The Borrowers and Honey, I Blew Up the Kids), Ryan has to deal with his deep-seated fear of Discovery by humans in an entirely unexpected way. While trying - and failing - to rein in Brendon's irrepressible adventurous streak, Ryan discovers the dread dangers of maverick human scientists. And cupcakes.</p><p>Written for the Bandom Big Bang in June 2009.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Lessons in Finding Unicorns

**Author's Note:**

> Betas: murklins, oddishly and allyndra (livejournal)
> 
> I should probably add some homage to the sources that inspired this, namely: the Borrowers, the "Honey, I..." franchise and, most of all, Terry Pratchett's Nome series. (Dorcas rocks!)

_Up the airy mountain, down the rushy glen  
We daren't go a-hunting for fear of little men_  
~ WILLIAM ALLINGHAM  
  
It was Jon who rescued Brendon, Jon who found him shivering in the shadow of the trashcan on one of Old Mr Wentz's Kentucky Fried Chicken nights. Therefore, it was Jon's fault whenever Brendon got into trouble. True, Brendon's genius for getting into trouble far outshone Jon's minor talent in that area. But Ryan liked to spread blame around with a big spoon.  
  
Ryan didn't think of himself as physically threatening, but when he massaged two fingers into the space under his left eyebrow Jon shied back. The guilty soft-shuffle of Jon's feet gave it away even if the lip rolling between his teeth didn't, and sometimes Ryan really wished Jon had more subtlety. Or more willpower when it came to informing Brendon that going out in _broad daylight, alone_ was not, in fact, the most fantastic idea anyone had ever had.  
  
"There are rules," said Ryan. He said it mildly, but Jon's soft-shuffle sped up into a wannabe tango.  
  
"He said he came here to escape rules?" offered Jon. Ryan's fingers started doing figure of eights across his temple, but all he said was, "Really? I thought it was the chicken."  
  
Spencer sniggered - Spencer, lolling back on what he considered to be 'his' spool, even though Ryan was the one who found it and appropriated it for the very reason that there were still a few gold strands clinging to it. Ryan shouldn't complain; Spencer had built him a proper desk out of matchboxes and spent half his time stealing Old Mr Wentz's tobacco papers and shaving down pencil leads so Ryan could write. At that moment, however, Ryan wasn't inclined to be fair. He was inclined to be angry.  
  
"Let me know when he gets back," said Ryan. Jon nodded eagerly.   
  
Ryan kept his spine straight until he got through the slice of red taffeta that divided his room from the living area. It was the only thing he'd brought with him from the Other House. As soon as he was past it, however, his shoulders slumped. He let himself fall backwards on to his bed and indulged in the melodrama of covering his face with his hands.  
  
There was a soft rustle as Spencer followed him. It had to be Spencer - Jon wouldn't dare, and Brendon ... well, Brendon thought he was above rules and personal space, but he made so much noise Ryan always knew he was coming and could take appropriate measures. These usually consisted of being wherever Brendon wasn't, and thanking providence that Old Mr Wentz was so deaf he played silent movies at full volume.  
  
It wasn't that Ryan disliked Brendon. His first feeling had actually been pity for the sopping-wet creature with big eyes shadowed by sweeps of hair. Ryan didn't have vast reserves of sympathy for anyone other than himself, but he let Spencer use the special tea and didn't object when Jon made a little fire to dry Brendon out. In fact, his whole attitude towards Brendon was one of _not_ being annoyed when he had every reason to be, but Brendon never appreciated this neutrality as anything but a sin against active adoration.   
  
"He won't get caught," said Spencer, with what Ryan thought was unwarranted faith.  
  
"Come on," he said. "Of all of us, he's the most likely to get caught. He was wearing _pink ribbon_ yesterday, did you see that?"  
  
"He took it off before he went out," said Spencer. He had the grace to flush a little when Ryan raised his head to stare at him. "Um. I mean?"  
  
"You knew he was going out," said Ryan slowly, "and you didn't stop him?"  
  
Spencer shrugged. That was the good thing about Spencer: he didn't believe in apologies or excuses. It was also his most irritating trait.  
  
"Why didn't you just go with him?" said Ryan. "Take Jon, too. Visit that animal next door while you're at it - don't think I haven't heard Brendon whispering about taming it, because I have. He's ridiculous, and so are you. Now please leave."  
  
"Ryan..."  
  
"Urgh," said Ryan, eloquently, and buried his face in the pillow Jon had stitched. Jon never revealed where his talents at needlework came from, but that didn't stop them all from reaping the benefits. Right at that moment, though, Ryan would very much have liked to shove a needle through Jon's eye.  
  
He lay there while Spencer got up and left. He didn't move until he heard Brendon's triumphant bellows, at which point there were embroidered roses imprinted on his face. Ryan's internal debate about whether he should go and confront Brendon now, or leave him a while to stew, was decisively trumped by Brendon storming into his room and yanking him up from the bed. Ryan was not especially tall, but Brendon was _tiny_ , which made his strength even more incongruous.   
  
"You've gotta see, Ross, you've gotta see," he babbled excitedly - and very well, Ryan would sometimes admit to being borne along on the riptide of Brendon's enthusiasm.  
  
The living room was gone. In its place was something huge and yellow, with pink bits lurking on its lofty pinnacle.  
  
"Did you," said Ryan, trying to gather his belief into a coherent sentence, "Borrow a whole cupcake?"  
  
Brendon nodded proudly. "It has _pink_ icing, Ross. I thought you'd like that." Ryan didn't interrupt to wonder why on god's good earth he had thought something so ludicrous, because for once he was interested in the rest of the story. "It was fine, Old Man Wentz will never miss it - there were loads of them on this huge-ass plate."  
  
"More than one cupcake?" Ryan looked around for Spencer to share a frown with, but his view was blocked by outlying regions of cake. Ryan remembered the last time Old Man Wentz had had cake. It was stale Battenburg, and it seemed one of the neighbours had given it to him. Ryan knew what cupcakes were, from the Old House, although he'd never have had the audacity to steal a whole one. Cupcakes and Old Man Wentz, however, did not fit.  
  
"Yup. There were all colours. And huge bunches of flowers everywhere. And the worktops were white instead of brown!"  
  
"That's what happens when you clean them," said Ryan absently. Then his mind caught up with his mouth. Spencer rounded the edge of the cupcake liner with difficulty, squeezing between it and the wall.   
  
"Old Man Wentz cleaned something?" he laughed. "The last time that happened was ... when? He got some kind of police notice?"  
  
"It was their community thing," muttered Ryan, "because he hadn't mowed his lawn in five years. This is _not_ good."  
  
"Look, even the Old Man has to wash a plate sometime," began Spencer, but Brendon broke in.  
  
"There were new plates all over the table too," he said, literally bouncing with superfluous energy. He seemed to have twice the amount allotted to normal people. "Pale pink ones with roses on them, and a lace tablecloth. It was pretty."  
  
"Oh," said Ryan, and Spencer finished with, "Shit."  
  
+_+_+  
  
Ryan much preferred creeping around at floor level. There were a limited number of things that could happen there: you could be accosted by rats, you could electrocute yourself on the multicoloured wiring humans loved to stuff their walls with, you could get lost, you could suffocate in a dust bunny, or you could make enough noise to risk Discovery. Once you started climbing upwards, the risks were the same, but you added 'falling to a messy and broken death' to their number.  
  
It made a twisted kind of sense that Brendon revelled in exploring. Ryan acutely remembered the day they thought they'd lost him - well, Jon lost him, because he didn't understand that when Ryan said 'Keep an eye on him,' it really meant 'Never let him out of your sight, and go to the bathroom in pairs.' Brendon turned up the next night, covered in grime and grinning to both sides of his face. Ever since, it had been impossible to stop him expanding his geographical knowledge by the most hazardous means possible.   
  
It was coming in handy now, of course. Brendon shimmied up pipes and wires and stray bits of wood that he'd apparently tied on for the purpose, with the dexterity Ryan had previously only seen in certain breeds of spider. Ryan's progress was much slower, hampered both by his fear of falling and his inability to detect where Brendon was putting his feet and why.   
  
"I've seen snails that go faster than you!" Brendon called down.   
  
Ryan could well imagine it - another thing Brendon adored was going outside, a place purpose-built to hide a hundred things that could eat you, stamp on you, or both. Ryan wasn't entirely sure what a snail was, but judging from Brendon's tone it fell even lower on the popular list than grumpy pseudo-group leaders who were dubious about the risk-benefit ratio of stealing unwanted food in broad daylight.  
  
Ryan just gritted his teeth and fumbled for the next piece of brightly coloured rag Brendon had wrapped around a cable. Brendon himself was swinging from a plane of wood. He reached down a hand in time for Ryan to see it and grab on. Brendon's strength surprised Ryan yet again, as instead of tumbling into space Brendon heaved the two of them on to the little platform, mostly upright. Gravity shoved Ryan on to his knees and Brendon went down with him, giggling. Brendon liked falling over, and had the bruises to prove it. He was always trying to inveigle Ryan into wrestling matches, which Ryan politely declined.  
  
"Are you okay, Oh Ancient One?" asked Brendon, shoving his face into Ryan's and crossing his eyes. Ryan pushed him back impatiently and brushed off his trousers. They were made from one of Old Man Wentz's tartan ties and Ryan was justifiably proud of them.  
  
"Where's this peephole, then?" he asked.   
  
He felt annoyed, as he always was when he spent more than five minutes in Brendon's unalloyed company. It had taken them the best part of an hour to get this high up, Ryan enduring Brendon's taunts disguised as encouragement all the way. Plus, Brendon's hand had felt dry and warm when he wrapped it around Ryan's - _capable_ , which wasn't a word easily associated with Brendon - and Ryan had to tamp down one of those worrying flitters in his stomach that had started when Brendon arrived and were getting worse every day.   
  
(Spencer's favourite place in the house was a crack in the skirting board that allowed him to see Old Man Wentz's television, but Spencer said the only medically-related programme he'd seen involved naked girl humans getting water balloons shoved up their chests. If Ryan died of this flittering disease, it'd be Brendon's fault, which was at least a comforting thought.)  
  
Brendon jumped up and swung aside a button that he'd duct-taped to the wall. It revealed a sizeable hole, which Brendon or Ryan could easily have slid their heads through, if that was anyone's idea of a good time. Actually, it probably was Brendon's idea of a good time. Ryan sighed and wondered if he'd have to make another addition to The List of Shit Brendon Isn’t Allowed to Do.  
  
The hole was just above the mantelpiece in Old Man Wentz's den. The last time Ryan had seen the den, watching Friends re-runs with Spencer behind the skirting board, it was brown. There’d been several shades of brown - in fact, every possible one had some representation - but it was not a room into which colour rushed where cleaning products feared to tread.   
  
Now, Ryan couldn't hold back a small noise of dismay. The plastic covers on the couches were gone, revealing them to be a gunky shade of orange; there were rugs on the floor instead of a layer of newspapers; and the table, usually only an approximate shape under stacks of US Weekly, beer cans and ashtrays, was bare of anything but a bowl of artfully arranged fruit. Ryan's mouth watered - it had been _years_ since he’d had a banana - but his higher brain continued freaking out. This was wrong. This was change. Change was never good.   
  
Before Ryan had any time to adjust, or snap at Brendon for nudging his shoulder against Ryan's to get more of the view, the kitchen door opened and two strange humans walked in.  
  
Ryan would be the first to admit that he didn't have much to do with humans. Spencer didn't mind them; he treated them as big, moving dispensers of food and television. Jon thought they were kind of cute. Brendon probably wanted to marry one. But Ryan hated them. He hated having to rely on them, to be scared of them, to be watchful all the time. So he mainly stayed away. His version of Borrowing was low-impact and needs-driven. He'd seen Old Man Wentz a few times, and he knew the people in the Old House too well, and he could name some characters in the television programmes Spencer had an encyclopaedic knowledge of. But he'd never seen any humans like these.  
  
The girl human was pretty, pretty enough to put even Brendon in pink ribbon to shame. Her long red hair had a ripple to it and her yellow dress made Ryan think of sunshine, which he'd seen maybe twice in his entire life. The boy human, on the other hand, was extraordinary. His hair was blue - Ryan didn't even realise human hair came in that colour - and stood up straight from his head. He was wearing a white hoodie with tiny green hearts all over it, pink jeans and gold sneakers. Ryan's mouth fell open, and he didn't even realise until Brendon shoved a finger under his chin to push it closed.  
  
"It even smells like him," said the boy human. If Ryan concentrated hard, he could follow human speech - Spencer was an expert, but he wasn't here. He only had Brendon, trying to distract him by pulling faces and wriggling his hand between Ryan's arm and his side, because that was the kind of thing Brendon did. Ryan just clamped his arm down more tightly and listened hard.  
  
"Babe, we've talked about this," said the girl human. "You said yourself the best thing was to sell."  
  
"That was before I saw it again." The boy human made a face Ryan recognised as being borrowed from Brendon's repertoire, when he thought he was being denied something he deserved. This occurred at least three times a day. "I used to come here every summer when I was a kid. Did I ever tell you that? For two weeks, I'd eat nothing but Lucky Charms and takeout and watch sports. I didn't even like sports. And the first time I watched porn was when Pop fell asleep in his chair and I got the remote from under him. He woke up in the middle and all he said was, 'I've seen that one before. It's average.'"  
  
The girl human put out her hand and rubbed his arm with it. Ryan would have done the same, in her position. "You know," she said, "there's no rush. I mean, we could take a couple weeks, stay over. Clean more. See how you feel then."  
  
The boy human turned a beaming face on her. "Could we?"  
  
"For you, babe, I will buy more Lysol," she said.   
  
"And scrub sponges!" said the boy human enthusiastically. He took her hand as they left the room.  
  
"So what'd they say?" asked Brendon, before the door had even properly closed. A wave of irritation washed away the mild glow Ryan was feeling.  
  
"Weren't you listening?" he snapped. For an instant, he imagined Brendon even looked taken aback, but he was clearly mistaken. A second later, Brendon was beaming and hugging Ryan's head, for no reason Ryan could see.  
  
"I was admiring the decor!" he said. "Is it good news or bad?"  
  
Ryan wrenched his head out of Brendon's vice-grip. Absent-mindedly smoothing down his ruffled hair, he said, "I don't know yet."  
  
+_+_+  
  
Spencer was wearing an uncharacteristically guilty face and a moustache of cake crumbs when Ryan and Brendon returned. There were also a number of toothmarks on the nearest edges of the cupcake.  
  
"What?" said Spencer, who knew what the little twitch in Ryan's eyebrow meant. "We can't even _move_ in here. It was the sensible thing to do."  
  
"No, the sensible thing to do would be to return it before the humans realise it's missing," said Ryan, "but we can't do that now, because it looks like it's been attacked by very neat rats, and we need a de-infestation as much as we need Brendon's doppleganger."  
  
"Hey!" said Brendon.  
  
"Harsh," said Jon, who was lying on what floor space was left. His beard was innocent of crumbs, but his belly was even rounder than usual.   
  
Ryan couldn't decide which of them to glare at most. Spencer was the natural leader of the group, but he much preferred taking a backseat and remaining best buddies with the other two, while Ryan put up with Jon's lazy asides and Brendon's ... everything. "I'll tell you what's harsh," he said. "Some relatives or something of Old Man Wentz are moving in here. And they're young. You know what that means."  
  
"Sex?" offered Spencer.  
  
"This house could do with some," said Jon wistfully, as if he didn't come from a house that provided ample opportunities for indulging in that activity every hour of the day. Jon used to live in the house next to Old Man Wentz's, which was owned by two humans who did nothing but scream at each other and throw furniture all day long. Jon said you could nearly sit on the table and drink their beer without them noticing, and from all accounts that was exactly what Jon and his friends did. Ryan still didn't know why, if it was such a great place, Jon chose to remain here and snipe at Ryan, even if he did find Spencer and Brendon entertaining.  
  
Spencer blushed and did an aborted waggle with his tongue, at the same time. Ryan tacitly chose to ignore this.   
  
"I meant Discovery," he said, "as you very well know. We're going to have to take some extra precautions."  
  
Brendon sagged over a bottle cap. "What, more? This place is already the Rule Emporium as it is."  
  
"No one's making you stay," snapped Ryan.  
  
There was a drop of a pause, which should have been filled with another 'harsh' from Jon, or Spencer scowling. In fact, all that happened was that Brendon went white and looked at the floor.  
  
"As I was saying," continued Ryan, but he knew he'd lost his audience. Jon was on his feet, leaning over to pat Brendon's shoulder. Brendon shrugged him away: Brendon, who demanded a daily quota of hugs and sulked interminably if it wasn't fulfilled. Spencer rose too.  
  
"My parents sent a message," he said, truculently breaking off another chunk of cake and talking with his mouth full. "I'm going to see them tonight." He didn't invite Ryan to come along, which was how Ryan knew Spencer was mad at him. It wasn't fair - Spencer complained about Brendon to Ryan just as much as Ryan did.   
  
"Whatever." Ryan angrily shouldered past Spencer. "I'm going to bed."  
  
"Take some cake!" Spencer called after him. "Brendon got it for you, after all."  
  
Ryan swore under his breath. And didn't take any cake.  
  
+_+_+  
  
Ryan lay on his back, head on his arms. He was in the violet haze between dozing and true sleep, and enjoying the fact that the accusing voices in his head - who sounded like Spencer, multiplied - were soothed into submission. He barely heard the quiet, "Ryan?" and when he did, assumed it was Spencer. So he just smiled and mumbled, "Yeah, come in, loser."  
  
The weight sinking into the bed was different - Spencer just flopped heedlessly against Ryan's legs. Ryan cracked open an eye and felt his heart sink, because there, indeed, was Brendon. He looked unusually subdued, hands folded in his lap, but Ryan wasn't fooled. He'd feel sorry for Brendon, and the next thing he knew Brendon would be abseiling down the kitchen cupboards and into Old Man Wentz's porridge.  
  
All the same, Ryan struggled on to his elbows and scraped the hair out of his eyes. "Well?" he said. "What do you want?"  
  
"I'm sorry I've caused you so much trouble," said Brendon quietly, "and if you want me to, I'll leave."  
  
Ryan drew in a breath of air and forgot how to let it out again. He had enough presence of mind to turn his head and cough on to Jon's pillow instead of Brendon's face, but Brendon didn't look terribly reassured by this. Instead, he thumped Ryan's back so hard that any remaining pockets of oxygen were instantly dislodged. Ryan writhed away from him and managed to suck in a breath on his own.  
  
"That is not," Ryan panted, "what I meant. _Asshole_. There are rules for a reason. Or do you want to be kept in a cage for the humans to look at you for the rest of your life? That is what will happen. You've seen their television."  
  
Brendon was quiet, his hand still hovering in the vicinity of Ryan's lower back. Ryan scooted sideways a little; he didn't want to risk getting another wallop from Brendon's tiny but magically powerful fist.  
  
"Did you..." Brendon made a little sound, halfway between a laugh and hiccup. "Did you ever wonder where I came from? Before here, I mean?"  
  
Ryan stared at him. "Sure, plenty of times. I just didn't think it was polite to ask." And I don't want you to ask me the same question, he added mentally.  
  
"Well, I told Jon. And Spencer, eventually." Ryan felt a dart of betrayal. "But I asked him not to tell you, so don't look like that."  
  
"Like what?"  
  
"Like you're going to take him Borrowing tonight and push him into the blender." Brendon's mouth twitched.   
  
"I would never do that," Ryan hastened to say. "Threaten, yes; do, no."  
  
"I'm so reassured," said Brendon. "Anyway, Spencer's ultimate peril aside ... I ran away from home."  
  
"I gathered as much," said Ryan dryly. "Considering the lack of escorts and the rain and everything."  
  
Brendon didn't look at him. His attention was focused on a loose thread on Jon's pillow, which he seemed intent on working even looser. "My ... my family, we lived in a really big human house. It was way bigger than this one. One of the humans collected old human things, what are they called..." His brow furrowed, and Ryan bit down the urge to intrude with a suggestion. "You know what I mean, anyway. One of the things the lady collected was toys. Dolls, mainly. She had this huge, huge dollhouse. And we lived in it."  
  
"You...?"  
  
"Lived in it, yeah." Brendon's fingers worked even faster at the thread, which was giving up any semblance of resistance. "We made like we were dolls, you see? We wore the same clothes during the day. She hardly ever looked at us, but we never knew when she would, so we had to sit very quietly all day and not move far from where we were 'supposed' to be in case she came. At night, then, we could go out. One day I didn't come back till the next night and my parents were furious. They said I'd risked everything and that I wasn't worth the trouble I could get them into and so - I left. I just left."  
  
Of its own accord, Ryan's hand came down over Brendon's and settled the frantic flutterings. After a few seconds, Brendon even consented to release the bedraggled thread. "I wandered in the rain for ages and ages, and then I smelled chicken ... so you're right." Brendon smiled, a hollow, wan ghost of his usual grin. "I did come here for the chicken."  
  
"I'm glad you told me," said Ryan, as softly as he could manage. "I wish you'd felt you could have told me sooner, but. I don't want you to sit still all day. I just don't want you to get caught, either. I don't want _any_ of us to get caught, but I'd even miss you if you were gone." A little life returned to Brendon's smile. "Maybe not the singing in the morning. But yeah."  
  
"You love my morning sing-a-longs, don't even front." Brendon bounced up from the bed. Ryan repressed a small sigh. "C'mon, it's nearly night and we have to go."  
  
"Go where?"  
  
"To return the cupcake!" Brendon laughed, as if this answer was so obvious Ryan questioning it could only be a joke.  
  
"I - Spencer's eaten half of it," said Ryan hopelessly.   
  
"Yes, but just wait! I've cut bits off to make it neat again. And that way you can even have a taste before we bring it back."  
  
Ryan stared at Brendon's face, bright with glee and not a little silliness. The little flitter started up again, stronger than ever. Ryan realised he'd told the truth: he would miss Brendon if he was gone. He'd miss him a lot.   
  
That was why he let Brendon grab his hand and drag him to the cupcake, instead of shaking him off with a grunt.   
  
+_+_+  
  
Ryan's preferred route to the kitchen was, predictably, through a gap in the floor's linoleum. For once, Brendon didn't even attempt to argue him into a more adrenaline-producing method. Ryan guessed that hauling the cupcake back through the tiny, dusty tunnel without mangling it too badly was enough to silence even Brendon. For a while.  
  
When they reached the end of the tunnel, Ryan could see the yellow fluorescent light from the kitchen illuminating the spiders' graveyard ahead. He wasn't bothered by it; Old Man Wentz habitually left the lights on wherever he went. From Ryan's limited observation of the species, humans weren't all that observant - otherwise they'd have noticed Borrowers long ago - so they probably needed all the help they could get. He turned around to tell Brendon to get ready, only to find Brendon licking the palm of his hand.  
  
"Brendon!"  
  
Brendon guiltily snapped his hand behind his back, but not before Ryan spotted the vestiges of pink icing on it. "Well, someone had to eat the bit I cut off!" he defended himself. "If you weren't gonna."  
  
"I told you, I'm not hungry." Ryan wasn't. He and Jon had Borrowed a whole slab of cheese not even a week ago, and Ryan was happily living off the rind. "Besides, I don't like sweet things. I have no idea why you thought I did."  
  
Brendon mumbled something that sounded like 'Spencer.' Ryan rolled his eyes. Brendon hadn't been there long enough to realise that Spencer's favourite pastime, after watching television and minding Ryan, was messing with people's minds. Ryan would have loved to probe what other lies Spencer had been feeding Brendon about him, but now wasn't the time.  
  
"What do you like, then?" Brendon wanted to know. Ryan stopped in the middle of uncoiling the twine, because he had to think about it.  
  
"Being safe," he said slowly. An image - his father - screamed into his mind, but Ryan stamped it down; physically stamped it down, banging his foot so hard it raised a little eddy of dust. "Knowing that we have enough food to last us, that we're not going to freeze ... yeah. I like that."  
  
"But do you ever like things just for you?" persisted Brendon. The light through the hole fell oddly on his face, rendering his usually transparent expression unreadable.  
  
"What, like cupcakes?" said Ryan. Brendon smiled, not abashed in the slightest. "I try not to. Things like that are only dangerous in the end."  
  
"Oh," said Brendon, in a tiny, glassy voice. But he set to with a will when Ryan handed him the grapples, which Spencer had fashioned from paperclips, so Ryan wasn't too worried about Brendon's emotional state. He perked up anyway when the time came to actually emerge.  
  
Ryan had never taken Brendon Borrowing with him before - although in this case they were technically Returning. Brendon had only been with them for a comparatively short time, and Ryan felt less need for variation in his diet and occupations than Jon and Spencer. In all honesty that was just an excuse. Ryan had a mortal fear of Discovery, one which no one else seemed fully to grasp, and he felt Brendon posed the biggest risk in that regard.   
  
But their beginning was auspicious. True, Brendon put on a 'stealth face', which resembled nothing so much as aggravated constipation, but his tread was light and he blended with shadows almost as well as Ryan. Ryan let him swing the grapple-hook, feeling Brendon's strength might be of use. He was rewarded in his faith, because Brendon got it first try. Even Spencer couldn't do that.   
  
They shimmied up the dank side of the cupboards, in the strip of space between them and the wall. Brendon went first, as he knew where the cupcakes had been last. Ryan still didn't entirely trust him not to go tap-dancing across the sink when he got up there, so he extorted Brendon breathlessly to _wait for me at the top_.  
  
"I _know_ ," said Brendon. "What do you think I'm gonna do?"  
  
Ryan said nothing, for fear of giving him ideas.  
  
Half-way up, a terrifying sound stopped Ryan in his tracks. The twine burned between his palms. The booming sounds, the echoing footfalls - they meant _humans, incoming_.   
  
"Brendon?" he squeaked.  
  
"Just keep going," Brendon's whisper floated down. "I think they're in the next room."  
  
Ryan felt himself backslide as sweat popped on his hands. Brendon gained several inches on him. He could go back down, but - and going up was just as bad. Ryan closed his eyes and clung on, frozen. He might have stayed there for all eternity, except that Brendon was there, suddenly, sharing the same bit of twine. His feet were balancing on Ryan's feet, and he held on by just one hand - the other snaked around to Ryan's waist. His touch was overly warm and clammy, and Ryan couldn't remember when anything had felt so good. He breathed in the Brendon-smell, gingery over a layer of sweat.  
  
"Ryan," Brendon breathed in his ear, sounding almost like he was singing. "Ryan, Ryan. You can move, okay? You can move with me. Give me your hand."  
  
"I'll fall off," said Ryan dreamily.  
  
"No way, dude," said Brendon. "Not on my watch. Give me your hand. Yeah, like that."  
  
Brendon's skin against his was warm and somewhat damp. Brendon lifted Ryan's hand and wrapped it around the twine at head height. It meant that he let go of Ryan's waist, which Ryan was somewhat sad about.   
  
Little by little, Brendon edged him up the twine, humming an endless and not entirely coherent babble of reassurance. After a time, Ryan could open his eyes. Not more than a crack, but it was enough to see Brendon's teeth plunging into his lower lip - a tic Brendon got when he concentrated, and subsequently a rare sighting.   
  
"I'm going to go over first and pull you up," said Brendon at last.  
  
"No," said Ryan. He thought he only said it inside his head and expressed it through his hands instead, which were gripping Brendon's very, very tightly. But either he said it aloud, or Brendon could read his mind.  
  
"I won't let you fall," said Brendon. "But I have to let you go."  
  
Ryan opened his eyes all the way and locked gazes with Brendon. In an attempt at sincerity, Brendon opened his eyes wide enough to show white all around. He looked like he'd just been bopped on the head, but Ryan felt happier anyway.  
  
He nodded, once. In an instant Brendon slithered away and over the top, with a final kick of his purple boots. Ryan's heart sped up, but before panic could inflate it further Brendon's arm and head were back over the side, both waving in a slightly frantic manner.  
  
"I've got my legs around this ... thing," he panted. "I don't know, it's heavy. Come on."  
  
Ryan did actually know how to swing over the side of a counter without help. But he let Brendon yank him up all the same, scraping his belly hard in the process. Once he was there he curled up and breathed into his hands. At one point he even thought Brendon put an arm around his shoulder. A second later, a bang resounded in the room, and it was filled with loud, frightening, _human_ voices.  
  
"Quick," said Brendon. "Grab the other -" He threw the grapple at Ryan, who just avoided a permanent facial scar. Brendon whisked the slack through his hands and even as the voices grew louder, the cupcake bounced over the edge of the counter. Ryan was now galvanised with fear instead of paralysed with it, so he yanked out the hook on his side of the cupcake. A shower of crumbs caught in his hair, eyelashes and shirtfront, but he didn't even care.  
  
Brendon tugged the cupcake further along the counter. Ryan pushed along with him until he remembered that this direction was human-wards. "What are you doing?" he said, too shrilly for his own liking.  
  
"The plate is just a little way along!" said Brendon. "Won't it be weirder if they find it by itself -?"  
  
Ryan didn't answer; instead, he pushed.  
  
His brain was in too much of a high alert to process what the humans were saying; he caught a word here and there - _Gabe, laboratory, snakes, cute_ \- but they didn't sink in. After what felt like a million mile sprint, he spied the other hillocks of cupcakes in the distance. They were blue, orange, yellow, green: every colour except pink. Ryan had hoped that the loss wouldn't be that noticeable - maybe humans weren't great at math. Now he hoped they weren’t great at colour recognition.  
  
They heaved the cupcake over the side of the plate. Brendon threw himself down bodily to prevent it toppling over and bringing the other cupcakes with it. Ryan grabbed hold of the frill and provided some leverage from the other side. It wobbled, but held. Ryan sunk to the plate to catch his breath, which was way ahead of him and doing its utmost to evade capture.  
  
"- _cupcakes_!" bellowed a human voice, intruding on Ryan's brief moment of serenity.  
  
There was no time to run. Ryan shoved Brendon's feet further into the morass of cakes and jumped in after him.   
  
"That's perfect," continued the voice - male, if Ryan was any judge. He was scared to look, but more scared not to, which was why he saw a blur of searing purple and two large hands descending from on high to pick up the plate.  
  
Ryan thought he'd become well acquainted with vertigo during his trip up the twine. In fact, that was only a brief encounter compared with the deep and meaningful relationship they developed during the heady swoop up, down and on to the kitchen table. He squeezed Brendon's ankle, mostly to ensure he hadn't slid off. He didn't dare to say anything.  
  
"Are you sure this will work?" said a female voice Ryan recognised. The next voice that spoke he also recognised, but it sounded enthused rather than limply doubtful.  
  
" _Dude_ ," it said, "will the table be big enough to hold it afterwards?"  
  
"Sure!" said the purple voice, much nearer to Ryan. He winced; the voice was so very loud. Even louder than normal human voices, except when they were turned up on the television because Old Man Wentz had lost his hearing aid again. "I'll set it low this time."  
  
As if in slow motion, the hand reached down and the fingers grasped for the pink-topped cupcake target. Unthinkingly, Ryan shoved Brendon - _hard_ \- so that he fell among the wilderness of scorched cupcake liners. The bottom of the pink cupcake was rising, in preparation for leaving Ryan totally exposed to human eyes. He acted without thinking, and plastered himself to the bottom of the cupcake as it rose.  
  
"I'll just set up the metre," said the purple voice. He dropped the cupcake lightly enough, but the impact when it pressed Ryan to the table was jarring. He rolled slightly, clutching his stomach.  
  
"Oh wow, there's totally a pixie on my table," said the other male voice brightly.  
  
"Don't try and distract me," warned the purple voice. "Ready? Three, two -"  
  
"Actually, that does kind of look like -" said the female voice.  
  
"ONE!"  
  
Ryan felt an insatiable urge to _stretch_. It was like having a very pert and persistent itch, except the feeling was warmer, and everywhere. It also made his eyes water madly, so he shut them.   
  
His first clue should have been the shouting swirling around him. For one thing, they were shouting things like: 'What the fuck, Gabe, why is there a man on my table?' and 'I _told_ you there was a pixie in the cupcake!" and "This is one really freaky stripshow. Like Little House on the Prairie meets Third Rock from the Sun" and "You are _not helping_ , Gabe." For another, it wasn't human-level; it wasn't insanely loud. It was only as loud as when Brendon sang over-enthusiastically or Jon and Spencer got into a debate over which brand of corn chips was the best.   
  
But the thing that really got him, that clued him in to the flipped-out utter _weirdness_ of the situation, was the cupcake sitting on his lap. It was tiny. He could hold it in his hand. He also wanted to eat it.  
  
He looked up into the faces of the three humans, which were variously angry, surprised and faintly lecherous, but mostly and most astonishingly not very large.   
  
"What happened?" said Ryan. "Why am I suddenly human sized?"  
  
"So you're an alien, then," said the blue-haired human, "not a pixie?"  
  
"What's a pixie?" said Ryan. He realised he was lying on the table, his feet sticking out over the edge. He attempted to swing them to the floor he knew was way down below him, but maybe closer than he thought, but he misjudged it and fell off the table completely.  
  
The last thing he heard before sinking gratefully into the black arms of oblivion was a tiny, distressed voice crying, "Ryan!"  
  
+_+_+  
  
Ryan woke up hurting all over, with one exception. His forehead was being dabbed with a cool, soft cloth, and it felt divine. Divine enough for Ryan to open his eyes to investigate further, and immediately regret it. The muscles lying dormant sprang up and clamoured for attention all at once. Ryan made a burbling noise.  
  
"Take it easy," said the woman. She had very clean nostrils. "You hit your head pretty hard."  
  
"Huh?" said Ryan, which the woman took as general rather than specific confusion.   
  
"Don't try to move," she warned him, as he tried to sit up. "You may have injured your back. How do you feel? Does it hurt anywhere?"  
  
"Everywhere," said Ryan. "Where's Brendon? He has to tell Spencer what happened to me."  
  
A frown marred the woman's features. "Where do they live, sweetie? Are they nearby?"  
  
"They're here," said Ryan.   
  
"Oh. Right." The woman sucked in her lower lip, in a gesture so reminiscent of Brendon that Ryan wanted to cry. "We'll, um. We'll tell your friends where you are soon, okay?"  
  
"Hey!" The blue-headed man popped into view over the woman's shoulder. "Pixie-dude! You're alive!"  
  
"He's obviously concussed," said the woman. "Possibly - well, he's talking about people who live here? Who are not us?"  
  
"Ash, he's a pixie," said the man. "He's not going to make _sense_."  
  
"I'm not a pixie!" Ryan protested. "I mean, I don't think."  
  
"Try not to get agitated," advised the woman. "Now, I want you to follow my finger."  
  
"Follow it where?" said Ryan, bewildered. The man laughed.  
  
"He's fine. Listen, I'm Pete Wentz and this is my wife, Ashlee. What's your name?"  
  
"Ryan," said Ryan.  
  
"And how did you come to be on our kitchen table, Ryan?"  
  
"We were trying to Return the cupcake," said Ryan. He decided the truth would be the best thing. He was well and truly Discovered now, and his only hope was to throw himself on the humans' mercy. Plus, his brain felt all shaken to pieces. "Brendon Borrowed it for me because he thought I liked cake - Spencer is _such_ an ass - but I was afraid you'd notice. Especially since it was the only pink one. So we brought it back and a big purple man picked up the one I was hiding behind and suddenly. I was _big_."  
  
Pete pondered this for a second, his eyes slanted to the ceiling. "So, like," he said slowly, "before, you were - small?"  
  
"Well," Ryan bristled, "not small. Just not human-sized."  
  
"And are there more of you small people around?" asked Pete. His mouth was bouncing from smile to pursed lips like an over-energized rubber band. Ryan tried not to look at it and concentrate on the question instead.  
  
"There's only four of us here," he said, "but Spencer's family and a bunch of others live in the apartment building, and Jon's friends live next door, and there was the Old House. But it got knocked down."  
  
"And you live - where? Under the floor?"  
  
"Of course not," said Ryan, with dignity. "We live in the walls."  
  
The door crashed open, revealing the purple man. Even in proportionate dimensions, his use of the colour purple was both vast and illegitimate. He was carrying in his arms a head-sized cupcake. A human-head-sized cupcake.  
  
"I told you!" he said breathlessly. "I told you it wasn't a fluke! Look at the size of this thing!"  
  
"Awesome!" said Pete. "We can have it for dessert."  
  
"But what does this mean?" said Ashlee. "Tiny people are living in our walls! They could be _peeing on the wiring_!"  
  
"Oh, no way," said Ryan. "One of Spencer's little sisters tried to do that once and she got in so much trouble. Everyone knows the story of Silly Timmy and the Exploding Body Parts."  
  
"Wow, I ... can picture that so clearly," said Ashlee. "It's reassuring and completely not, at the same time. Did you say another - uh - not-human-sized person came with you to steal the cupcake?"  
  
"Return it," said Ryan. "And we don't steal, we Borrow."  
  
"So what, you were gonna give us back the cupcake after it was eaten?" said Pete. "Thanks. I really appreciate that."  
  
"It's only stealing if you take it out of the house," Ryan explained. Honestly, humans were so _dim_.  
  
Pete and Ashlee exchanged a look. "But what about the others? Your family?" Ashlee pressed.  
  
Ryan's mind shut down, the way it always did when someone mentioned 'family' - or worse, 'fathers' - in connection with him. "I have no family," he said, his voice skimming over the icy depths the sentence covered.  
  
"But you said - those other people," said Ashlee. "Brenda?"  
  
"They're my friends," said Ryan. "Brendon was with me when we Returned the cupcake. I don't know what happened to him. I got Discovered. It's all my fault. I swore I would keep them safe - I got mad at Brendon so often - and in the end, I'm the one the humans captured."  
  
"Oh, sweetie," said Ashlee. "You're not our prisoner. In fact, it sounds more like you're our lodger."  
  
"Yeah, you totally owe us rent, man." Pete bellowed out a terrifying laugh.  
  
"Guys?" said Gabe. "This cupcake looks good."  
  
"Of course it does," said Pete, looking nettled for the first time. "My cupcakes are always awesome."  
  
"You didn't let me finish," said Gabe. "As in, it's good that it looks good this size, because I haven't invented the reverse-transcriptor yet."  
  
"In English, that means what?" asked Ashlee.  
  
Gabe gestured at Ryan with a fistful of cake. "That the man-alien-fairy here is stuck like this. I can't turn him back."  
  
"I'm stuck being human?" said Ryan, faintly.  
  
"It's not all bad," said Pete. "I mean, you won't have to live in the wall anymore."  
  
"The wall is my home. And now I can't even fit inside it." Ryan kept gasping. He wondered if there were less air to go around now he was human-sized.  
  
"If I were you," said Pete to Gabe, "I'd get cracking on the reverser thing."  
  
"The original model took me five years to prototype!"  
  
"Look, never mind that now," said Ashlee. "First of all, Ryan, you need a nice bath and a hot meal."  
  
"A bath? What's that?"  
  
"Huh, we sure ... have a long way to go," said Ashlee.  
  
"Yeah, and dude," said Pete, sounding vastly amused, "are you wearing _booties_?"  
  
+_+_+  
  
Ashlee showed him to the bathroom, both of them wobbling a bit as Ryan tried to get used to new dimensions and how his feet could take a day's walk in one step. His shoulders ached from bumping into things.   
  
The bathroom was a revelation. Of course, Ryan washed - more than the rest of them did, but they all went and stood under the leaky pipe at least once a week. Ryan had tried to start a clothes-washing rota in the same place, but it hadn't taken. Brendon and Jon between them made new clothes when the old ones got dirty enough to stand up on their own. Although Ryan was now the best at making clothes, he hadn't been brought up with those kinds of skills, and additionally he got overly attached to things he'd owned for a long time.   
  
The idea of a whole room devoted to nothing but bathing was balm to Ryan's rattled soul. Ashlee, spying his interest, pointed out the shelves of good-smelling lotions and unguents that belonged to both her and Pete (Pete's shelf was considerably more crowded), and generously offered him the use of any that took his fancy. Indeed, she seemed to be pushing certain items to his notice, ones called 'shampoo' and 'conditioner' and 'shower gel.'   
  
Dirt was a lot more noticeable at this size. Ryan noted with chagrin that his fingernails were black and Ashlee's were snow white. He'd never known anything above a certain level of grubbiness, and the humans' state of hygiene was completely alien to him.  
  
When Ashlee left him, having charged him with detailed instructions for working faucets and plugs, he poured a little 'strawberry shortcake exfoliating scrub' on to his wrist and rubbed it in. It bubbled slightly, releasing delicious scents. It was when he got bored of watching it and ran the tap to wash it off that things really started to happen. A patch of pale, pale skin appeared, and got bigger as he gingerly lathered the soap higher on his arm. Soon, the sink was filled with murky water and Ryan's arm was white to the elbow. Ryan was amazed; he'd always assumed he was a light brown colour.  
  
The possibilities of a whole bathful of potion-filled water now loomed before him. Excited and impatient enough to forget his troubles, Ryan managed to get the plug in the hole and start filling the bath. He deliberated for a time, then decided on pouring a little of every bottle into the bath. He took especial care to sample each of the shampoos and conditioners - of which there were several - seeing as Ashlee had been at pains to point them out.  
  
The water turned a pleasing shade of golden-pink as a result, so Ryan turned his attention to his clothes.  
  
Although his head was in turmoil, it had also sped up to the max when it came to taking in details. He'd seen what the humans were wearing; it wasn't like what he was wearing. Brendon had brought a few things with him - like Borrower-sized top hats and a pair of purple boots - that were unusually well fitting. However, most of what they wore was cobbled together from scraps of material and their sewing skills. Ryan pulled off his tunic and wriggled out of his pants. He released the drawstring on his soft shoe-sacks - what did Pete call them? Booties? - and carefully unwound the scarf from around his neck. It had been a birthday present from Spencer, whose parents had sent him two ribbons that he used to plait together into a scarf. It was Ryan's most prized possession.  
  
He put the pile on what Ashlee had called a toilet. She hadn't gone into details, but Ryan assumed it had the same use as the pile of woodshavings near the porch. It was everyone's favourite job to change those.   
  
Stepping into the bath was a bliss unlike any Ryan had ever known. He closed his eyes and sunk down until he was completely submerged. His skin revealed itself to be pale everywhere, and his hair pliant and soft instead of slightly stiff. He thought he must have fallen asleep, because he woke drooling on to the side of the tub. The water was cold.  
  
Someone had come in while he was in the bath - naked - because his clothes were gone. In their place was a soft white shirt and loose, shapeless trousers, with a lime-green furry robe. Ryan's brain wanted to think a lot of things, but there just wasn't room. All he could see was that Spencer's scarf was gone.   
  
He pulled on the clothes, which felt faintly warm. The house seemed silent. The creakings and low rumblings that Ryan was so used to, that were part of his daily life, were either gone or inaudible at this distance. It sounded empty and very cold.  
  
He pressed the green robe to his face before he put it on, slumping inside of it. Although Ryan was taller than the humans - and how weird was that? - the robe reached the floor, the sleeves skimming his knuckles. He liked the fact that he could hide inside of it. It even had a hood, so he could pull it low across his forehead.  
  
He shuffled downstairs, into the once-brown living room. It still looked oddly clean, but also untouched, like maybe Ashlee and Pete hadn't been in there recently. It took a while for Ryan to orient himself; there was so much skirting, he had no idea where their hidey-hole was. He eventually sat down in Old Man Wentz's La-Z-Boy, because his head was always in view when they watched television from the spyhole. The chair wrapped him up like a friendly hug - Ryan could see why the Old Man liked it. He let it relax him for a few seconds before he got down on his hands and knees and crawled to the skirting board.   
  
"Spencer?" he called. The television wasn't on - hadn't been on, come to think of it, for days and days - but Spencer might still be there. He kept a stash of peanuts nearby, and it wasn't far from their home. Surely they could hear him, if he called loudly enough?  
  
"Spencer? Spencer? Jon! Brendon! C'mon, you guys! It's me!" Ryan rubbed a hand over his eyes, which were getting too blurry to let him see the little sliver that showed where Spencer should be. "Please, you guys. It's Ryan. I got - there was an accident, but please. You _guys_. Please. Don't leave me here alone."  
  
"Ryan, there you - oh god, sweetie, what's wrong?" Ashlee knelt beside him. Her arms slipped over his shoulders and rubbed soothingly. She smelt amazing, like the kitchen when Old Man Wentz heated up cookie dough in the microwave. (Brendon had once wanted to go inside the microwave and sit on the spinny thing while it was on. Only Spencer pointing out that what happened to food in there would invariably happen to Brendon prevented him. Brendon, who saw what happened to Ryan and was gone and wasn't answering him. Who'd left him behind.)  
  
"They aren't answering," Ryan choked out. His eyes were two slits held together by a film of tears. "Why won't they answer? It wasn't my fault, but maybe they ran away. That's what happens when you get Discovered, you know? Everyone else leaves, everyone else runs away. It happened to my dad. But why'd they leave _me_? I never thought they'd do something like that."  
  
"It's okay, it's okay," said Ashlee softly, not stopping her gentle circles. "There's a reasonable explanation for everything if you look hard enough. But I'm going to put you to bed, with a nice hot drink. You've had a long day."  
  
"I used to tell Brendon to go away!" said Ryan. "When he first came he had nightmares and he crawled into bed with me and if he woke me up I'd kick him out. And now I'm all alone."  
  
"You're not," said Ashlee firmly.  
  
"Who else is there?" mumbled Ryan.  
  
"Me, for one," said Ashlee. "And I'm pretty sure Pete wants to adopt you. It's our fault this happened, and even if that weren't true, do you think we'd turn you out of a house that's yours as much as ours?"  
  
"I want to go home," said Ryan, piteously, and so softly he wasn't sure Ashlee heard. He wasn't sure he wanted her to.   
  
+_+_+  
  
Ryan was woken by a faint susurration. It reminded him of the sound of water rushing through the pipes, only it was coming from his chest.  
  
As he gradually drifted to the surface of consciousness, the sounds became more distinct. One was soft and punctuated, one was almost like a groan, and the last was an incessant buzzing that a mosquito would have rejected for being too annoying. It took Ryan a little while to realise the sounds were actually voices.  
  
"It is, it is!" buzzed the loudest. "I don't care, look at his face!"  
  
"Spence, did we fall asleep in front of the TV again?" mumbled Ryan sleepily.  
  
The sounds fell silent. Then -  
  
"I _told_ you!"  
  
Ryan felt a series of tiny tugs on his shirtfront. Then came a not-insubstantial weight on his collarbone. Ryan hoped it wasn't one of the beetles getting over-friendly again. He raised his hand to swat away the offending object, only to find that it ducked.  
  
There was an offended wail of " _Ryan_!" It sounded like Brendon, coming from very far away. Ryan quickly scrubbed his sleep-slick eyes and focused on the light coming in from the window.  
  
The light. From the window. He was abroad in daylight -  
  
And then the events of the last few hours came slamming back to him. "Brendon?" he called. "Where are you?" He made to move, assuming Brendon was somewhere in the wall. A yell made him freeze.  
  
"Look down, you idiot!" said Brendon. Ryan looked down. And down. His face was practically in line with his neck before he caught sight of Brendon, who immediately used the change of position to rest his elbows on Ryan's chin, smirk, and say, "Hi."  
  
"Brendon." Ryan couldn't think of another word.  
  
"C'mon, it's okay." Brendon turned around, exposing the back of his tufty head, and gestured with one windmilling arm. There came another set of jabs across Ryan's chest, and Spencer and Jon hovered into view.  
  
"You guys," said Ryan, "you found me."  
  
"Yeah, it took some doing." Brendon tried to strike a pose, discovered how precarious his balance was on Ryan's collarbones, and grabbed Ryan's chin again to keep from falling. "This house is big on the inside."  
  
"I looked for you." Ryan let a shade of accusation dim his tone. "I looked for you in the television room."  
  
"Yeah," said Spencer, "because the first thing that occurred to us when Brendon said you'd been kidnapped and mutilated by humans was _to watch some TV._."  
  
"Oh."  
  
"Jackass," added Spencer, and patted Ryan's jaw.  
  
"So," said Jon, "what happened? Where is the mutilation I was promised?"  
  
Ryan spread his arms a little and tried to communicate via his eyebrows the whole 'made huge as a tree' thing. The eyebrows worked when he was four inches tall, but there was now a strong possibility that Jon couldn't actually see them.  
  
Jon waited patiently for the answer, so Ryan eventually huffed and said, "They made me grow about six feet."  
  
"Huh, man. That sucks."  
  
"Yes," said Ryan, "I know."  
  
"So when are they turning you back?" said Spencer. "Do they know what you are? Are the pest men coming?"  
  
"I don't know, yes, and no," said Ryan. "Ashlee and Pete are ... sort of nice. Okay, Gabe is insane, but I don't think he actually lives here."  
  
"They're humans," said Spencer. "I never thought I'd hear you say that about humans."  
  
"I didn't really have a choice," said Ryan. "They haven't locked me up yet, and they gave me food and there was this awesome thing called a _bath_ , you guys, we really have to -"  
  
A knock sounded at the door. "Ryan?" came Ashlee's voice. "Are you all right? You sound like you're talking to yourself."  
  
"Quick." Ryan cupped his hands and, after a minute hesitation, Jon and Spencer climbed in. Brendon scrambled up on to Ryan's shoulder instead; Ryan didn't have the time to argue.  
  
He carefully and gently put his friends on the floor, where they scampered into the shadows under the bed. "Bren?"  
  
"I'm staying with you," said Brendon.  
  
"Fine," said Ryan, "but you're going in my pocket."  
  
Brendon gave a gasp of protest, but it was no match for Ryan's supersized fingers. He plucked Brendon out of the folds of the dressing gown with two fingers and plopped him into the pocket, not letting go of Brendon's collar until he was sure Brendon had a good grip. Only then did he feel safe enough to open the door.   
  
"You have to turn it, remember?" Ashlee's voice sounded amused, even as Ryan's bemused rattlings became more frantic.  
  
"Oh. Right." Ryan turned the doorknob as hard as he could, and was rewarded by a faint click and the door swinging open.  
  
Ashlee stood there in a grey dress with little blue flowers tossed all over it, and blue strappy shoes. Ryan could hear Brendon draw in a breath, and knew what he was coveting. The only thing Brendon admitted to missing about his old life was the shoes.  
  
"Are you all right?" repeated Ashlee. Her head was on one side, as if that were a better angle at which to survey the mystery that was Ryan.  
  
"Fine, thanks - I just woke up. I was a bit confused, I mean. The mattress." Ryan flushed and halted.  
  
"Oh, you - don't have a mattress?" Ashlee looked a little shocked. "I guess - where would you get a mattress, huh? Anyway. It's morning now. Pete's made pancakes. You should come down if you're hungry - and even if you're not. Pete’s pancakes should not be missed."  
  
"Okay," said Ryan. He had no idea what pancakes were, but the smell wafting up the stairs was mouth-watering.  
  
"And before I forget!" Ashlee reached into a frilly basket at her feet. "I got Gabe to wash your clothes - I felt it was the least he could do. And I put in some others that might fit - you're very tall, Pete's won't do, so I asked William for a few loans."  
  
She held out a pile of clothes that reached halfway to Ryan's head. On the top, shining softly in the sunlight, was Spencer's scarf.  
  
"I - thank you," said Ryan. He took the pile and bent his head, rubbing his cheek across the familiar ribbons, worn smooth from much loving.   
  
"I guess that means a lot to you, huh," said Ashlee. She turned the ring on her left hand, smiling.  
  
"Do you mind - maybe, could I change first?" asked Ryan hesitantly.  
  
"Of course!" said Ashlee. "Although, we don't stand on ceremony here. Come down to breakfast in your pyjamas if you like." She reached around and shut the door for him. "See you in a bit!" floated through it.  
  
"Did you see her shoes?" asked Brendon rapturously, popping his head out of the pocket.  
  
"Yes, sublime," said Ryan. "I'm putting you down now so you can go home."  
  
"Didn't you miss us?" protested Brendon.   
  
Ryan didn't care to tell him how much; how much he still did, because being this tall kept him as far away from them as ever. However, he was deeply regretting having revealed their existence to the humans. A human-sized Borrower wasn't of much interest, but a Borrower-sized Borrower was. He hoped to fix the situation somehow, and that involved Brendon not being in the vicinity, using the inopportune moment to complement Ashlee on her choice of footwear.  
  
"I need to talk to the humans about fixing this," said Ryan, tactfully side-stepping Brendon's question.  
  
"I won't stop you," said Brendon. "I just want to make sure nothing else bad happens to you."  
  
"Oh yeah? What are you going to do - bite their ankles?"  
  
"It might work." The sad thing was, Brendon sounded serious. Ryan sighed and picked up him by the scruff again.  
  
"Ryan, no!" Brendon sounded genuinely distressed.  
  
"I have to take you out, I'm changing," Ryan explained. "And don't look!"  
  
"It's like you don't trust me at all." Brendon settled into the pillow on which Ryan placed him and put his hands over his eyes. "See?"  
  
Ryan's answer was to drape the dressing gown on top of him. His yells were muffled, but it would take him ages to find his way out. It wasn't that Ryan didn't trust Brendon not to peek; it was just that he didn't trust Brendon not to peek.  
  
He'd thought the pyjamas fit well, but it was nothing to the other clothes Ashlee provided. The trousers were dark blue and narrow, almost narrower than his legs; and the t-shirt clung to him and said 'Mongoloid Porn Inferno' in dripping red letters. There were sock-sacks too, the same white as Ashlee's nails and teeth, but they were too small for Ryan's new long, thin feet. He left them be, and turned around to see Brendon's head just visible under a fold of the gown. His hair was a static halo, and he was beaming.  
  
Ryan made a strangled sound, and Brendon just grinned wider. "Nice view," he remarked. "Sory I didn't get to see more of it, is all."  
  
"You're a terrible, terrible little - _fiend_ ," said Ryan. "Just for that, I should leave you behind."  
  
"But you won't," said Brendon. He sounded so confident even Ryan believed it.   
  
Ryan put a palm flat on the pillow next to Brendon. Unhesitatingly, Brendon clambered aboard. His hands felt different to his feet, small soft pads against Ryan's skin. Ryan hooked his elbow against his chest to guard Brendon from falling. "Where am I going to put you?" he wondered aloud.  
  
"What about down there?"   
  
"Where?"  
  
Instead of answering, like a normal person, Brendon dropped from Ryan's palm by one hand. Before Ryan could so much as grab at him, Brendon climbed down Ryan's belly by grabbing handfuls of shirt and came to rest on the white belt.  
  
"Down there," said Brendon. He kicked a little at the material underneath the belt - and seriously, even Brendon couldn't be that clueless. "There's a space down there." He put a hand on Ryan's stomach and used the other to point behind the zipper, beaming out innocence at a hundred watts.  
  
"Seriously," said Ryan firmly, and swooped Brendon up again. Brendon just laughed and whooped. Ryan put the dressing gown back on and slipped Brendon into the pocket, not quite as carefully as before.   
  
"Cheeky," muttered Ryan to himself. His only answer was a giggle and the feeling of a tiny finger poking him in the side.  
  
Ryan took a deep breath, opened the door on only the second go, and went down to face the humans.

+_+_+

 

Ryan had been prepared for Ashlee and Pete, and possibly Gabe plus an excess of purple. When he saw that there was yet another new human to encounter, he grew confused and shy.   
  
The human was afflicted with no such doubts. He was long and rangy, with hair swinging over his eyes and a curving smile. His eyes travelled from one end of Ryan to the other as he hovered in the doorway.  
  
Pete turned from the oven to carefully divest a skillet of a round, crispy brown object. When he saw Ryan, his face lit up.  
  
"Sit down!" he crowed. "You can have this one."  
  
"Uh-uh," said the new human. He hadn't taken his eyes off Ryan yet, which made Ryan uncomfortable and even more clumsy than he would otherwise have been. "You promised me the next one."  
  
"You've already eaten three," Pete pointed out, "and Ryan is our guest."  
  
"Ryan, huh." The newcomer's tongue slipped out of the corner of his mouth. He smiled around it in a way that was entirely disconcerting and would have made Ryan blush, if he wasn't already. "I'm William." He reached a hand across the table and didn't even have to stand up to do so. Ryan fumbled for composure, dropped it and accidentally kicked it into the next field, and settled for grabbing William's hand and letting it go within the same five seconds. His palm was cold and dry, nothing like Brendon's or Spencer's.  
  
Pete plonked a plate in front of Ryan. "What's your pleasure?"  
  
"What?" Ryan cleared his throat of the squeak and tried again, to William's accompanying grin. "What do you mean?"  
  
"We have -" Pete performed a little flourish "- blueberries, strawberries, cream, maple syrup, chocolate syrup, raspberry syrup especially for Billvy, who is a sick sick man, apricots, almonds, and my special favourite: icing sugar and lemon juice."  
  
"Um." Ryan's eyes widened at the choice, all of it fresh and some of it even hot. "I've never - what's good?"  
  
"Here." William hooked Ryan's plate with one spindly finger. "I'll do it for you."   
  
"Thanks," said Ryan. A squirming came from inside his pocket; Ryan gently cupped his hand over it, to let Brendon know he hadn't forgotten him.  
  
William heaped a spoon of strawberries and cream into the middle of Ryan's pancake, folded it, and covered it with maple syrup and almonds. "If you don't like that," he said, returning the plate, "your taste buds aren't fit to be in my presence."  
  
"Okay," said Ryan shyly. He took up a spoon, trying to remember what humans did with them in the TV shows. Pete let him attack the pancake with the handle for a few seconds before cracking up and showing him the right way. Ryan blushed deeper. William stared.  
  
"What," he said, "are you from _Europe_?"  
  
"I -" started Ryan.  
  
"Yes," Pete broke in. "He's from, uh, Transchekoslakania. He has very good English, though. Knows loads about, um. Cabbage."  
  
Ryan nodded, mouth full. Then he closed his eyes and swallowed, letting himself do nothing but savour the taste. And maybe letting out a little moan of appreciation. Under his spare hand, Brendon went still.  
  
When Ryan opened his eyes again, having wrung out every last drop of taste from his spoonful, William was still staring. His expression had changed from bemusement to - something else. His lips were pushed out the way Brendon's did when he was pouting, but with a considerably different effect. Ryan felt like he was back in the bath, submerged in boiling water.   
  
"Billvy," said Pete warningly. "Let the kid be."  
  
"I didn't do anything!" William protested.   
  
"Yeah," said Pete, "yet. Come on. Gabe said he wanted all hands on deck."  
  
"Like I care about Gabe's silly little experiments," said William - and now he was definitely pouting.  
  
"What, are you fighting again?" Pete sighed. "Whatever." He turned to Ryan. "Ashlee ran out to get some stuff to paint the bedrooms. I'll be over at Gabe's for an hour or so. Will you be okay? There's more food in the fridge - um." He patted the machine for good measure. Ryan nodded earnestly.   
  
Pete and William were almost out of the room before Ryan called out, "Thank you."   
  
Ryan waited until he could hear the doors close all the way through the house before he let Brendon out. Brendon demanded freedom well before this, so Ryan was obliged to push his head down every time he tried to force his way out of Ryan's pocket. Eventually, though, he said, "C'mon," and let Brendon climb into his palm. Ryan was growing to like the feel of Brendon there.  
  
"Look at all this stuff!" said Brendon. "Can I have some?"  
  
"Duh," said Ryan. "I'll get Spence and Jon, too."  
  
"Don't worry, I'll do it," said Brendon. "They might think you're one of the humans."  
  
Ryan felt gutted, but he had to admit Brendon was right. "But hang on, have something before you go." Ryan's reason for detaining Brendon was not entirely altruistic; Ryan thought about Brendon's stomach about as much as he did meteorological phenomena. Brendon was very willing to oblige, however, so Ryan didn't have to examine his own motives any further.  
  
Brendon got his arms around a strawberry nearly as big as himself and bit into it. Juice spurted all over his face and most of his once-white shirt. Brendon didn't seem to mind, plunging his face into the strawberry with renewed vigour. Ryan ate more slowly, savouring the fresh, warm taste of the pancake. He cut off a Brendon-sized sliver and left it on the side of the plate for Brendon to try when the strawberry ceased to be sufficiently distracting.  
  
"Oh, wow," moaned Brendon. His face was glazed pink and he had a lump of strawberry flesh in each hand. "This is amazing. This is so amazing. Have you had one, Ryan? You gotta have one."  
  
"I have had one," said Ryan. "I didn't feel the need to _become_ one with it, though."  
  
"You're missing out," said Brendon, assertively. He began licking his arms and hands. Ryan rolled his eyes to the ceiling, looking away from the little, lapping pink tongue. His spoon had been resting on a white cloth, for whatever reason, and he flicked Brendon on the head to get him to stop sucking on himself and began dabbing instead. Brendon stilled and held out his hands submissively. The strawberry juice was either very stubborn or very attached to Brendon's skin, and Ryan found it necessary to wet the cloth in his mouth before he succeeded in getting Brendon clean.   
  
"Okay, I'd really better go now. Spence will be so pissed if he misses this, he won't speak to me for a month and then he'll make it like he actually was and I only realise later I was talking to myself." At Ryan's raised eyebrows, Brendon added, "It's happened before."  
  
"Yeah, Spencer is evil when he's mad," said Ryan. "When did you guys have a fight, though? I don't remember it."  
  
"Oh -" Brendon sucked in a breath, eyes darting to the half-masticated strawberry "- it was a while back."  
  
Ryan shrugged and held out his hands for Brendon to climb into. He felt almost hurt when Brendon shook his head.  
  
"I've always wanted to do this instead!" he explained. He ran to the edge of the table, lowered himself fly-style over one leg, and slid to the bottom, whooping all the way.  
  
"Freak," said Ryan, but he handed down the slice of pancake he'd saved all the same. He listened to Brendon's gleeful thanks as he ran away until he couldn't hear them anymore.  
  
+_+_+  
  
"You know what we should do," said Jon, sitting in the middle of the debris that was once a pile of almonds and the last of the cream, "we should go _outside_."  
  
"What?" said Spencer.  
  
"Don't be ridiculous," snapped Ryan. "We'll be seen - oh."  
  
Jon nodded smugly. "Plus, we have you to protect us, warn us if the others are coming." His voice turned wistful. "One time, in Tyson's house, him and Nick got so drunk they passed out on the porch, and we got to sit there for a whole hour. Sean turned totally brown, it was awesome."  
  
"I ... guess." Ryan turned to Brendon, face-deep in another strawberry. "What do you think?"  
  
"Mhh-hmm." There was a sucking noise as Brendon extracted himself. "I think I want to marry a strawberry."  
  
"About going outside," said Ryan, more patiently than he felt. Brendon's face _glowed_.  
  
"Oh, really?" he crowed. "Ryan, you're the best."  
  
"It was my idea," said Jon.   
  
"You're the best too," said Brendon. "No. Strawberries are the best. Can we bring some with us? Ryan, you can, in your pocket."  
  
"You've already chewed on most of them - and before you ask, no, gross."  
  
"How did you know I was going to ask anything?"  
  
"Don't even pretend, you were going to ask me to put those half-mangled ones that are covered in your spit in it - you were going to ask me to touch them. The bonds of friendship only go so far."  
  
While he was speaking, Ryan prodded Brendon closer with his finger and began to wash his face. As before, Brendon passively turned his face up to the cloth. Not as before, Spencer looked at them with an expression halfway between laughter and horror.  
  
"Are you - cleaning him?" he asked.  
  
"I'm not putting him in my pocket all slimy," said Ryan quickly. Brendon scowled at him and ducked out of range of his cloth.  
  
Once they were all ensconced safely in Ryan's pocket, Ryan made his way to the screen door. His heart pounded louder with each step he took. He managed to open the door, but no more. His breathing was too fast to function and grey shadows pushed at the sides of his vision. He hardly registered the change in weight until Brendon was on his shoulder again, tugging on his earlobe.  
  
"It's okay," Brendon whispered. He was so close his lips moved across Ryan's skin, light as a dust-kiss. "You're human-sized now. If anyone sees you, they won't know. Plus, look how sunny it is. Take a step."  
  
"What are you, my brain?" said Ryan, but he took a step. Then another. And Outside was there, he was in it, and it was _huge_.  
  
"The sky doesn't look that big on television," he said helplessly.  
  
"Oh man, there's the kitty!" cried Brendon. Ryan started involuntarily, prompting a chorus of 'hey!'s from his pocket. Brendon just pinched his ear.  
  
The cat was ... not the hulking, ravening beast Ryan pictured it as from fleeting glimpses and a rational interpretation of Brendon's descriptions. It was quite the opposite; small, now, with fluffy white fur standing out at all angles, and an engaging rumble that only got louder when it spotted Ryan. Ryan poised to flee, but all the animal did was wind around his ankles in a concerted attempt to either trip him up or prevent him from moving ever again.   
  
"Let me down, I wanna play!" said Brendon.  
  
"It will _eat you_ ," snapped Ryan. Brendon just blew a raspberry in Ryan's ear and swung down the back of his shirt.   
  
Ryan stomped over to a long white chair covered in frayed blankets. He let Spencer and Jon out of the pocket, then flung himself backwards. "Don't tell me if that animal tears him to shreds and decorates its nest with his remains," he told them. "I don't care."  
  
"Right," said Spencer, and nestled into the crook of Ryan's elbow. "Wow, the heating out here is great."  
  
"Hey, Brendon, wait up!" called Jon. He jumped off the chair, rolled a little on the landing, and was up and running before Ryan could do a thing about it. He and Spence managed to share a Look, despite their eyes being completely different sizes.   
  
"The animal will be very well fed today," said Ryan.   
  
"Good for it," said Spencer sleepily. Within minutes, Ryan could feel his whuffling snores against his arm. Ryan, however, kept his eyes peeled for imminent feline anthropophagy.  
  
The cat didn't seem terribly interested in immediately devouring Jon and Brendon, but it was having a ball chasing after them, batting them with its paws when it caught them, or attempting to leap on them when it didn't. At one point Brendon got a hold of some of the outlying fur and pulled himself up on to the cat's back, where he swayed mightily but kept on. He yelled "Look at me, Ryan!" but Ryan just rolled his eyes and focused on the clouds, which seemed far away and close at the same time. When he looked over next, the cat was curled up around Jon, both of them apparently fast asleep. There was no sign of Brendon.  
  
Ryan sat up, mouth drying out. He jostled Spencer, who muttered but didn't wake. "Brendon?" called Ryan. There was no reply. "Oh, shit -"  
  
"What's wrong?" Brendon dragged himself over the side of the chair. Ryan immediately took him up in both hands and brought him close to Ryan's face, so that he could get the full effect of Ryan's glare.   
  
"I thought you'd got eaten!"  
  
"Naw," said Brendon comfortably. "The kitty loves me. I used to play with the cat back ho - at the old house. Cats love me. Guess who else loves me?"  
  
"I don't know," said Ryan, "bald eagles? Vultures? Rats?"  
  
"No, no, and no." Brendon bounced forward to the very ends of Ryan's fingertips, and planted a kiss on the tip of his nose. At least, Ryan thought it was a kiss - Brendon could have licked him; the sensation was so slight it was hard to tell. "You! Now lie back, you're more comfy that way."  
  
"So now I'm your personal lounge," said Ryan.  
  
"What do you mean, 'now'?" Brendon settled in against the curve of Ryan's neck, curling his legs into the hollow above Ryan's collarbone. "Oh wow, you're much less pointy at this size."  
  
"Yeah, well, you're ... heavier."   
  
Brendon just made a noise that was eerily close to the cat's purr and settled in closer. Which was when the screen door banged, and Ryan looked up to see Pete staring at him with a guilty expression.  
  
"Sorry, I -"  
  
Brendon sat up, looking at Pete with just as much curiosity as Pete was looking at him. Spencer was hidden by Ryan's arm and Jon was safe (relatively) with the cat, but Brendon and his purple boots were in full view.   
  
"Please don't -" said Ryan, not knowing what he wanted to say. Guilt formed a leaden ball at the bottom of his stomach. Yet again, he'd failed in his duty to protect.  
  
"So you really ..." Pete swallowed, obviously, his Adam's apple bobbing. "You _really are_. It wasn't just a trick."  
  
"What do you mean?" asked Brendon. Pete started, before his face broke into one of his teeth-splitting smiles.  
  
"You exist," he said. "All my life, I believed. Well, I hoped, mainly, but I believed. And you really exist."  
  
Brendon looked as confused as Ryan felt, but one thing was clear: whatever else Pete was, he wasn't a danger to them.   
  
"Listen," Pete continued, "do you guys, like, know where to find a unicorn?"  
  
+_+_+  
  
Spencer and Jon were not happy to talk to Pete, but he and Brendon had been having the longest conversation possibly ever on record. Ryan gave up timing it after an hour and a half and stared moodily across the fence instead. A tall man leaned over it at one point, winked at him - covering him in confusion and blushes - and called away the cat. Jon hid behind a tuft of grass and made his way back stealthily to the chair. He and Spencer held a whispered conversation that led to them getting Ryan to take them back inside. Ryan told Pete and Brendon where he was going, but neither of them so much as looked up. Brendon was sitting on a cupcake, pulling off chunks so he could talk with his mouth full, while Pete watched and talked in rapturous adoration.  
  
Ryan let Spencer and Jon out of his pocket with regret, but Spencer's Ryan-sense hadn't altered with size. "See you later, loser," he said. "I know where you sleep now."  
  
"Plus, you have an in to the best food," added Jon.   
  
"Yeah, yeah," said Ryan. Smiling was an effort, but he made it.  
  
No sooner had they disappeared behind the skirting than Ashlee wandered into the room, neck wrapped in orange feathers and a giant plastic flower on her head. Ryan, who respected human fashion as making so sense whatsoever, took no notice, but Ashlee laughed a little self-consciously and pulled out the flower.  
  
"I've been cleaning out the wardrobe in the master bedroom," she explained. "Pete's granddad never touched a thing after his wife died. There's some awesome stuff in there, but most of it's junk. I mean, look at this!"  
  
She held out the flower, which was a particularly tacky blue and surrounded by spiny plastic leaves. Ryan took it and turned it over in his hands.  
  
"Maybe it meant something special to her," he said, slowly, thinking of his scarf and the piece of taffeta, Brendon's hats and Spencer's father's marble and the pieces of beer bottle Jon filed down into interesting shapes.   
  
"Maybe," said Ashlee, "although more likely it came from some hideous eighties headdress, but it doesn't mean anything special to me. If we're going to move in here, we need to have room for _our_ stuff." She added ruefully, "I wish I could say none of it included ugly plastic flowers, but that would be a lie."  
  
"What - what happened to Old Man Wentz?" asked Ryan. "Has he gone away on vacation again? He's lived by himself all the time we've been here."  
  
"Oh. Oh, Ryan." Ashlee's eyes went wide. "Pete's grandpa, he - well, he died, sweetie. He died a week ago."  
  
Ryan put a hand to his forehead. "Humans die too?" he said faintly.  
  
"Well, yes." Now Ashlee looked puzzled as well as concerned. "They die all the time, young and tragically sometimes. But Fred was eighty-seven, and he passed away peacefully in his sleep. As deaths go, it was ... kind."  
  
"My dad's head was cut off in a mousetrap," said Ryan. The words came out neatly and one-by-one, as if Ryan said this all the time to people he barely knew, as opposed to never to anyone.   
  
"Oh my _god_." Ashlee grabbed Ryan's arm - Ryan worried for a minute that she was going to shake him - and pulled him into a tight, fierce hug. It wasn't all that comfortable, because Ashlee was so much smaller than he was and the violence of her action had twisted Ryan's elbow into a weird place. Yet a small tight part inside of Ryan loosened slightly, for the first time. He took a deep breath.  
  
"I can't even ... I don't know." Ashlee's voice was muffled somewhere below Ryan's jaw. Ryan nodded.   
  
"I never told anyone," Ryan said, still amazed that he had now. "I mean, yeah, I told Spencer he died, but not ... how." Ashlee's arms tightened around him for a second before she stepped back to wipe her eyes.  
  
"I'm going to get Pete to make you the biggest chocolate cake in the _world_ ," she said. "In the meantime, do you want to help me find all the other plastic flowers Kate hid in her wardrobe? You can keep them, if you want."  
  
"I'd like that," said Ryan. "I'd like that a lot."  
  
+_+_+  
  
An hour later, he and Ashlee were sitting in the middle of a pile of clothes so big and bulky they could rest their backs against it. Ryan had never seen so many _things_ in all his life. Although nothing would ever abate his love for Spencer's scarf, Kate Wentz had owned forty-seven: silk, cashmere, wool and even a few satin ones that Ashlee called 'wraps.' Ryan was particularly attached to the flowered blouses. Ashlee suggested he try one on, and it only escalated from there.   
  
Ryan was now wearing a pair of flared velvet pants, pink flip-flops stuck all over with blue plastic flowers, a green silk shirt with daisies marching haphazardly across it, and a soft brown hat decorated with a purple feather. Ashlee looked no more sane, swathed in a satin opera cloak with ruby buckles, elbow length white gloves and a tiara. She'd tried to explain the concept of Daughters of the American Revolution to Ryan, but got sidetracked into explaining revolutions and America. When Ryan asked about daughters, she gave up.  
  
"Well, it's different for me." Ryan fiddled with a worn patch in the knee of his pants, which was stitched up with big loops of silver thread. Jon would not be impressed. "Spencer, now, his parents used to live in the same house as us. They all moved away eventually - they live in this amazing apartment building and they can go visit each other by hanging on behind the elevators. And they send Spencer stuff because the human in the top apartment has pet pigeons, or something. But my dad had this thing for Borrowing the whiskey, and he'd get stupid. He was Discovered loads of times. Eventually, no one thought it was safe to stay, but - I couldn't leave him." He gulped. "Then the people who lived there started worrying about rats and mice. They put a trap in the drinks cabinet." Ashlee reached out and twined her fingers with his, freeing the thread for the moment. "After - after, I had to take him away. And. The remains. I couldn't let them see, you know? I lived by myself for a while after that. I don't really remember. Spencer came to visit one day and then his parents came and we moved into this house, so he could take care of me."  
  
Ashlee had a really strong grip. It reminded Ryan of Brendon's.  
  
They sat in silence for a while, until Ryan asked Ashlee about her pretty ring. It turned out humans gave them to each other when they got married. Borrowers didn’t, although Ryan was far from expert on the subject; his mom had disappeared when he was a baby. No one knew what happened to her, although there were whispers – all of them horrible.  
  
“... So that's why I don't know much about - romance and stuff. Jon's had girlfriends, but he doesn't really care, you know? He likes a good time. Spencer has a girlfriend back in the apartment block. I think Brendon was supposed to get _married_ , before he came here. My dad always said children are the curse of marriage, so I guess I thought you had to be married to have children."  
  
Ashlee burbled a laugh. "Not at all." She patted her belly. "Pete and I are married, but I think the two things are so completely different that they shouldn't be connected at all. Unfortunately they are, all the time."  
  
"So you're going to have a baby?" asked Ryan. "Where is it?"  
  
"Oh god." Ashlee laughed harder. "Let me come back to you on the sex education. I'm pretty sure Pete has an instructive leaflet or two around - he likes to give them to the kids at shows. A one-man army battling gonorrhoea and genital warts." At Ryan's face, she just shook her head. "Never mind. Do you want to keep some of these clothes?"  
  
Ryan nodded eagerly. "And do you have, maybe, a needle and thread?"  
  
"You can sew?"  
  
"Sure."  
  
"I'm not sure I have any here," said Ashlee, "but we can go shopping tomorrow. You need some shoes that fit, for one. And I still haven't decided what colour to paint all these rooms. I was thinking this could be a nursery - for the baby? But it has to be gender-neutral, or Pete will have a fit."  
  
"Paint it all colours," said Ryan, "with lots of flowers."  
  
"You really have a thing for flowers, don't you?"  
  
"There aren't many flowers in the walls," said Ryan simply. "Humans are so lucky."  
  
Ashlee was silent a moment. "I would love to paint this room in flowers," she said, "but I don't have the skills. Maybe wallpaper? You can come with me and help."  
  
"We can bring these," said Ryan. He picked up the bunch of plastic flowers they'd accumulated - Kate's collection had turned out to be monstrous - and beamed.  
  
"You know what," said Ashlee, "we can. And the first place we're going is a park - or a florist - because you deserve to see real flowers."  
  
Ryan laughed and flopped back against the piles of clothes. A warm, bubbly feeling filled him up inside. He didn't know what it was - it felt a little bit like the shivery feeling he got around Brendon, but less sharp and anxious - but it felt good. It felt very, very good.  
  
+_+_+  
  
Ryan decided against telling Brendon about his proposed trip to the 'mall', as Ashlee called it. It was one thing for him to sit in the relative safety of Pete's garden and talk to him about - whatever they were talking about; it was quite another for him to venture out into the public eye. Ryan felt terrified enough at the prospect without adding concern for Brendon's welfare to the mix - although he admitted that he would have liked Brendon's moral support. For all his flighty, flirty ways, Brendon had proved himself to be a pillar of support in the last few days. But Ryan felt enough guilt about most things in his life to add misjudging Brendon's character to the list.  
  
Ashlee had soon tired of the limited prospects put forward by Kate Wentz's wardrobe, but Ryan didn't fail to be intrigued and excited for the rest of the night. Even the prospect of chocolate cake - which Spencer had once had on a birthday, stale and crumbly but still so good - didn't entice him away without reluctance. Ashlee found an old sewing kit of Kate's among her things, and Ryan whiled away the evening cutting and tacking things that appealed to his imagination, trying to fit them to the images behind his eyes. At one o'clock Ashlee popped her head around the door and told him he should get to bed, otherwise he'd be tired getting up early in the morning. Ryan hadn't even noticed the time passing.  
  
Ryan wasn't sure what sort of costume humans were required to wear at malls, so he decided to put on something he'd created the night before. He was certain Pete and Ashlee would tell him if it was wrong. Ryan himself was exceedingly pleased with it. The tight green trousers went well with the flowery flip-flops, reminding him of fields on TV shows, although sadly deficient of cows. He'd eventually worked out how suspenders worked; Fred Wentz had owned a dashing set in gold lame, which accented the stitching he'd sewn into the pink blouse. The crowning touch was the hat. It was a bowler, one that had once been very dull, but was now reworked with a coil of plastic flowers and a small veil in back that Ryan had pinned up in loops of silver lace.   
  
The effect on Ashlee and Pete - who were both wearing jeans and what looked like matching t-shirts - was certainly profound. Neither of them spoke for a good twenty seconds. Then Pete burst out a grin.  
  
"My _man_!" he said. "You look sick! Where do you get that stuff?"  
  
"Ashlee said I could keep a few things of your grandmother's," said Ryan, secretly elated by this reception.   
  
"You look like - an imagination on legs." Ashlee stood up to inspect him more closely. "I never saw that blouse last night. I really like the roses on it."  
  
"I stitched them on," said Ryan. "Roses are the only flower Jon knows how to do."  
  
Ashlee's fine eyebrows met her long bangs. "You seriously did that? In a few hours?"  
  
"And look at this hat!" enthused Pete. "Patrick would love it."  
  
"Because he's in mourning?" said Ashlee. "It has a mantilla on the back."  
  
"Was it not supposed to?" asked Ryan anxiously. "I just liked how it looked."  
  
"Fashion," said Ashlee, "is all about that. God, you'll be the next Karl Lagerfeld or something."  
  
Pete jumped up on tiptoes to hug Ryan's shoulders. "You are totally my favourite," he said.  
  
It was probably not very mature of Ryan, but he felt very smug at that. _Ha, Brendon_ , he thought meanly.  
  
+_+_+  
  
Ryan looked back with nothing but fondness on Mrs Smith's reading classes, but they just weren't equipped for preparing you to deal with human books. It wasn't till he sat back with an aching neck and yards of white fabric patterned with gardenias - Ashlee had bought him a book on flowers - that he realised he'd spent a whole day without the company of one of his friends. That hadn't happened since his father's death.   
  
Yet he hadn't felt lonely. He could hear the sounds of Ashlee stripping paint and Pete cooking. They frequently popped their heads into his room to check how he was doing. Ashlee had claimed the fabric already for her baby's bedroom. The first thing Ryan planned on learning was how to sew curtains.  
  
The setting sun streamed in the window with a vengeance that suggested it had a personal vendetta against both any metal surface and Ryan's face. Despite sitting mostly still, he was sweaty and not smelling of the sweetest. That was saying something, considering that Jon liked to go 'au naturel' for weeks on end. Ryan called down the stairs, where Ashlee and Pete had last been spotted. Pete turned up, his face smeared with flour.  
  
"What up, Karl Lagerfeld?"  
  
"Is it all right if I take another bath?"  
  
Pete started to laugh and caught himself midway. "Sure, knock yourself out. You know how to work it and stuff?" Ryan nodded. "Cool. Dinner'll be about an hour!"  
  
Ryan stripped in his bedroom and, swaddled in the lime green dressing gown, padded down the hall to the bathroom. It was warm and a little muggy.   
  
Ryan sat on the floor, paddling his hand in the slowly rising, scented water. He occasionally closed his eyes and leaned against the cool marble. The water was just this side of too-hot and he liked the way his hand gently burned. When it was frothing with pale pink bubbles, Ryan slipped out of the dressing gown and stepped into the water. An involuntary hiss broke his lips as his skin met the burst of heat, but it turned from a slap to a caress as he slid under. The tingle seeped through his skin. He didn't think anything else in the world could feel so good.  
  
He splashed the water at his toes, loving the way every inch of skin was abrading clean. It was the state of deep relaxation the whole experience engendered that probably saved him from drowning when a cheery little voice said, "Hi, Ryan!" Instead of squawking and disappearing beneath the water, there to breathe his last, Ryan just knocked his head on the back of the bath and said, "Ow!"  
  
"Are you okay?" asked Brendon - for Brendon it was - not sounding sincerely anxious so much as sincerely amused. Ryan scowled and snatched his legs to his chest, sending great waves of water out over the sides of the bath.  
  
"Where are you?" he demanded. "More importantly, how long have you been watching?"  
  
"I'm hurt that you would think I'd do a thing like that." Brendon lightly dropped down from the soap dish on to the lip of the bath. He was dressed in a billowy pair of pants and nothing else. "Are you going to invite me in?"  
  
"To my bath?" said Ryan, growing more indignant with every word. "Get lost."  
  
"You're crap at sharing," Brendon informed him, seconds before he grabbed his nose and leapt into space. "Kowabunga!"  
  
"Brendon!" Ryan half-screamed. Brendon sent up a small arc of water as he plunged through the surface. Ryan scrabbled frantically along the bottom of the bath, at last locating Brendon's squirming figure and lifting him out. Brendon was red-faced and gasping, but for all that he seemed no less delighted with himself than usual.  
  
"That was awesome!" he yelped. "Put me back up so I can do it again!"  
  
"I'll do no such thing! God, Brendon, why are you always so keen to do dangerous shit that could kill you?"  
  
Brendon was silent for a moment. Ryan, who hadn't expected Brendon to take more notice of this remonstration than he did any other, was disconcerted. He wanted to rub his face, which was prickling with heat and rage, but his hands were cupped around Brendon, so he couldn't.   
  
"Because otherwise I might as well be dead," said Brendon softly. "Or stuck back in the dollhouse, never moving, never talking, never _doing_." He wriggled, clawing at Ryan's fingers as if that would affect any change in their position. "Lemme go, then. I'll stop bothering you."  
  
"Shut up, asshole." Ryan sighed, tipped Brendon fully into one palm - ignoring his squawks - and grabbed a sponge shaped like a duck, which was floating near his toes. He placed Brendon atop this and sent it spinning off. Ryan made a few lethargic waves with one hand while he relaxed and closed his eyes.   
  
"Ryan."  
  
"Mmm."  
  
"Ryan!"  
  
"What?"  
  
"Open your eyes."  
  
"Don't wanna."  
  
There was a pause, followed by the sounds of determined paddling. Ryan let his eyes drift open to slits, just enough so that they still looked closed and gave him the benefit of the doubt. Brendon was riding the sponge duck with gusto - and it was working. A few seconds later he floated up to Ryan's chest; the duck's beak prodded him insistently just below his left nipple. Ryan hadn't even realised he was ticklish there, but he let out an involuntary snort of laughter all the same.   
  
"Ryan." Brendon whispered it, even though there was no chance Ryan was fooling him now.   
  
"Brendon."  
  
"Are you naked under there?"  
  
" _What_?" Ryan frantically fluffed up the bubbles around his legs. They were still plenty numerous and, as chastity manoeuvres went, were pretty nifty. Still, the idea that Brendon had been _looking_ \-   
  
Ryan's sudden full-body flush wasn't helped by Brendon crowing, "You are!"  
  
"I'm washing," said Ryan defensively. "You can't wash properly while clothed."  
  
"I'm clothed."  
  
"Yes, and please stay that way!" Ryan's voice hit a very high note at the end. Brendon leaned back on the duck and laughed, his bare chest hitching with the movement. His pants were white and practically transparent when wet, so they were even worse than bubbles for hiding anything. Ryan abruptly decided he was clean enough for the moment.  
  
"I'm getting out," he announced. "Close your eyes."  
  
Brendon rolled them instead. "You realise we both have dicks, right? Yours isn't going to shock me to death."  
  
"It's called being modest," said Ryan stiffly. Brendon huffed.   
  
"Fine." He rolled on to his stomach and paddled away from Ryan.  
  
"Don't look this time, either."  
  
"Well, don't throw things at my head! I tend to take it badly."  
  
Ryan didn't answer, but he got out of the water and into a pair of sweatpants a lot faster than he'd thought possible, given his persisting awkwardness with all things human-sized. Brendon was still paddling in a direction determinedly opposite to Ryan, humming faintly and tunefully. Ryan took a washcloth off the rack and knelt down by the bath.  
  
Brendon wasn't expecting to be picked up, but his reaction was more one of grief at parting from the duck than shock or annoyance. Ryan rolled him up in the washcloth and put him on a sun-splashed patch of nubbly bathmat while he continued dressing. When he was arrayed in another of William's t-shirts (this one reading 'Gabe is not a synonym for Sisky') and the pink flip-flops, Brendon still hadn't moved. His eyes were fixed on Ryan and his expression was thoughtful.  
  
"I missed you today," he said. "Why didn't you come get us? Jon has been just dying for more pancakes."  
  
"I, uh, was busy. I didn't think you'd notice."  
  
"Of course we notice," said Brendon. "Do you ... not like spending time with me? I mean, us?"  
  
"It's not that." Ryan sat cross-legged on the floor. Brendon stood up and climbed on to Ryan's knee, trailing the washcloth like a cape. He was still a little damp, soaking through to Ryan's skin, but Ryan didn't mind. "We spend all our time together, usually. It's interesting to get to know new people. Humans aren't what I thought they'd be."  
  
"What did you think they'd be?" Brendon peered out from under a hood of terrycloth.  
  
Ryan thought. "Evil. Harder. Less ... less like us."  
  
"Anyone who invents TV can't be all bad," said Brendon.  
  
"Yeah, but," Ryan hesitated, "they also invented dollhouses."  
  
"Sure they did," said Brendon, "for _dolls_. We aren't dolls. The only ones who made us act like we were was, well, us."  
  
Ryan's finger found Brendon's head and began gently massaging his hair dry. Brendon arched into the touch, half-closing his eyes. "My mom used to brush my hair with a Barbie brush," he said dreamily. "I loved that."  
  
Ryan thought about the toy store he'd visited with Ashlee, who'd cooed over the tiny bicycles and Tonka trucks. Ryan had wanted very much to take home some of the doll clothes, to see what Spencer would look like in a proper shirt or Brendon in, well, anything. But he had no money, and the human world needed money for everything. That was a worry Ryan was currently shelving, far in the dusty recesses of his mind.  
  
He took Brendon back to his bedroom and Brendon got comfy in the dent in the pillow left by Ryan's head. When Ryan hopped in himself, Brendon made no effort to move.  
  
"It's bedtime now," Ryan tried.  
  
"Yeah." Brendon yawned, stretching his arms up high before knuckling his eyes vigorously. Ryan did not find it cute, whatever his eyes had to say about it. "I'm so sleepy."  
  
"So maybe you should go back to your own bed?"  
  
Brendon started to smile, but buried it in the pillow. His voice came out muffled. "I like yours better."  
  
"Fine." Ryan gave in and lay down. It wasn't like Brendon took up a huge amount of space, after all.  
  
When they both fell asleep, it was with Brendon curled around Ryan's thumb, the curve of Ryan's hand sheltering his body.  
  
+_+_+  
  
Time moved on, and before Ryan knew it, a week had passed, and two. Time seemed faster and more liquid when you were this big. There was just so much more to do - even eating took longer - that time didn't hang on his hands the way he was used to. Hours passed when he didn't think about Spencer or Jon, although he rarely got through five minutes without remembering Brendon in some way. Ryan woke up one morning with a strange feeling and realised he hadn't seen Spencer in three days, Jon in five, and Brendon all of yesterday.  
  
Ryan got up and, like he did every morning, sorted through the meticulously folded pile of clean clothes. Ashlee had taught him to use the washing machine and Pete to iron a few days after what they were now calling his 'arrival'. Ryan had yet to get over the novelty of it. Pete just laughed and accepted his flat-ironed socks; Ashlee said she never thought she'd see the day when not just one, but two men around the house were willing to do all the ironing.  
  
The house was quiet as he shuffled downstairs. Pete and Ashlee weren't there all the time - in fact, they didn't even live there properly yet. They had another house somewhere else, to where they were always returning to meet people who didn't know about this one or who lived too far away to visit. Ryan guessed it was like the way Spencer's parents couldn't just come by at the drop of a hat, the way they'd used to when they all lived in the same house and Ryan's dad didn't drink so much.   
  
Ryan was quite au fait with the cooking facilities now. There had been a run-in with the oven and the sudden appearance of smoke and flames, but Ashlee was determined. Pete wanted to start right away at teaching him things like Baked Alaska and cherries jubilee, but Ashlee was firm in her resolution to have Ryan boil an egg without killing himself first.  
  
"It does not bode well for the future," she'd confided to Ryan. "He'll have Kiddo here learning ballet and karate before it can even crawl."  
  
Ryan had vague thoughts of making French toast with strawberries, which thoughts he'd been having pretty continuously since he'd first tasted it. He walked unthinkingly through the living room, riffling his hands through his sleep-crumpled hair. He nearly jumped out of his skin when an amused voice said, "Love the t-shirt. I suppose I should - it is, after all, mine."  
  
Ryan turned slowly, feeling the back of his neck prickle. William was sitting on the sofa, arms stretched out along the back and one ankle louchely hooked over the opposite knee. He was wearing cowboy boots and a thin pale shirt that clung to dips and curves Ryan hadn't even known could exist on a man's body.   
  
"Pete isn't here," said Ryan. He knew the t-shirt was William's - even if every t-shirt he had wasn't, it would have been pretty obvious because of the way someone had scrawled 'Billvy = love' twelve times all over it.   
  
"I'm aware of that," said William. His smile was stolen from a shark. "I just came from Gabe's. They're working on that Eat Me machine again."  
  
"Eat Me?" said Ryan, confused.  
  
"With pleasure." William's eyes flashed darkly for a second, before he registered Ryan's confusion. "Haven't you ever read Alice in Wonderland? Eat Me and Drink Me. One made you big and one made you small. I don't know why Gabe keeps on with it - it's never going to work. He might as well take a spaceship to the first star on the right."  
  
Ryan, all too aware of just how well Gabe's machine worked, said nothing. William seemed happy to stare at him for a while, running his eyes up and down Ryan until Ryan's toes curled in under themselves.   
  
Eventually William tired of this and patted the seat beside him. "Siddown," he said. "You are a mystery to me. Pete usually can't shut up about his new proteges, but you he's been annoying close-lipped about. If it weren't for Ashlee and the Womb of Doom, I'd say he'd got himself another little boy toy."  
  
Ryan didn't understand half of this, but the meaning behind William's words was clear and Ryan didn't like it. "I was going to have breakfast, actually," he said. "But I'm sure Pete won't mind you hanging out."  
  
"I'm sure he won't!" William threw back his head and laughed - at what, Ryan couldn't fathom. But his neck was long and slender and the way it moved sent hot shivers down Ryan's thighs. Abruptly, Ryan turned around and went into the kitchen.   
  
The rhythm of preparation soon soothed him - cutting the crusts neatly off the bread, quartering the strawberries, preparing the plates. He was beating eggs in a bowl and whistling to himself - something he'd doubtless picked up from Brendon - when a warm weight enveloped his back.  
  
"Whatcha doing?" William breathed into his ear.  
  
"Uh, beating eggs." Ryan thought it would be impolite to simply thrust William off, although it was what he felt like doing. "You have to make them really light, you see, or they go gloopy -"  
  
William's hand slid around his waist, unerringly finding the skin revealed between his sweat pants and the hem of his t-shirt. Every hair on Ryan's body stood on end, and he froze.  
  
"Do you like that?" asked William, still in the same soft, contoured voice.   
  
"I, uh - what?" William's little finger dug into his bellybutton, scooping beneath the waistband of his sweatpants as Ryan hissed in a breath. He dropped the whisk, eggs forgotten.   
  
He didn't mean to let William do anything. The crawly feeling in his skin was only one step removed from horror, but it was closer to want than Ryan could ignore. William's hot hands turned him like a top until Ryan was trapped between William and the counter, the edge cold against his bare back because William slid his tshirt up, up, up, thumbs sinking roughly into his flesh.   
  
When William kissed him, it was overpowering. Ryan's eyes closed and his mouth opened all in the same instant. The new sensation of being touched and kissed and held was liquifyingly intense. William's tongue pushed against his teeth in heavy strokes, making Ryan's breath catch in his throat. He grabbed William's hips to stop himself falling, which was when he heard a tiny, horrified voice say, "Ryan?" and a louder, angrier one say, "William!"  
  
William leaned away from Ryan, but his thigh was still pressed between Ryan's knees and no one looking at Ryan could have failed to guess what had just happened. Pete looked angrier than Ryan had ever seen him, even when America's Next Top Model had been unexpectedly cancelled one night.   
  
"I told you to leave him alone, you jackass!" Pete stormed over to William and pulled him away by the back of his shirt. Clearly he was like Brendon, in that he concealed strength in a tiny, fragile frame. The thought of Brendon made Ryan sick to his stomach. He wiped his hand across his mouth.  
  
"He's a big boy, he can take care of himself," said William.   
  
"Oh, fuck you," said Pete. "When I say things like that, I mean them."  
  
"You also said that the demons of hell would hunt me down if I stole Patrick's hats," said William. "So far, no hellfire."  
  
"Get out of my house, or so help me, I will feed you to Tyson's stupid fluffy animal." Pete was shaking, his fisted hands jittering.  
  
"Jeez, man, calm down." William put up two hands. "I'm going, I'm going."  
  
"Where do you want this?" called a voice from the hall. A moment later Gabe backed into the room, carrying a huge box. William's face went white and red, with some pink for variety. Gabe's face lit up when he saw him.  
  
"Billvy, my man!" he said. "You're up before noon! Are you ill?"  
  
"No, I was looking for you," William lied outright.  
  
"Didn't I say I'd be in the lab today?" Gabe frowned. "Sorry."  
  
"No big. I'll see you at home, 'kay?" William sauntered out, and if it was a little faster than usual, no one commented.  
  
"That was weird," said Gabe.  
  
"You don't say," said Pete grimly, and without asking tipped Ryan's eggs down the sink. Ryan opened his mouth to speak, but Gabe made a slashing motion with his hand. Ryan was happy enough to take the excuse; he didn't know what to say to Pete anyway.  
  
He called and called for Brendon - or Spencer, or Jon - after Pete and Gabe went back to the lab, but no one answered.  
  
+_+_+  
  
Pete found Ryan slumped in Old Man Wentz's La-Z-Boy. The look on his face changed from chastising to empathic as soon as he saw Ryan's face. Being tiny, he was easily able to perch on the arm of the chair and hug Ryan at the same time.  
  
"I'm sorry about William," said Pete. "He's, well. He's not good at dealing with his feelings. He's attracted to people like a kid is attracted to shiny things and dirt, and once he has them he doesn't know what to do with them. I didn't want that to happen to you, not after - everything else."  
  
"I didn't mean to upset you," said Ryan lowly.  
  
"You didn't upset me! Maybe you upset William, but he'll get over it as soon as he finds another piece of ass. Or falls in love properly for the first time. You deserve more than that."  
  
They were mutually quiet for a minute, then - "The others aren't talking to me," said Ryan. "It's the first time I haven't seen Brendon for this long."  
  
Pete bit his lip. "Ah. Well, I've got some news for you that will probably stop you thinking about them for a while."  
  
"Bad?"  
  
Pete nodded. "I'm really sorry, Ryan, but it looks like you'll be this size for a long time. Forever, really. Gabe's experiments with the reverse-transcriptor have been yielding totally random results. It was only by chance that it worked on you. A really bad chance, I guess. He's not even sure what he did to create it, so he has no idea how to reverse it. I'm pretty sure he was drunk when he assembled it, actually." Pete abruptly stopped talking, scratching his head. He was probably provoked by the look on Ryan's face; Ryan didn't know what it was, himself, but if the way his lungs were turning inside out was any indication, it wasn't pretty.  
  
"I'm going to be this big forever," he repeated. "But I'm not human."  
  
"It's not that hard," offered Pete. "You can cook now, which is more than many can say."  
  
"But - money," said Ryan. "Humans can't live without it and I have none. And where will I live?" He felt like he was gasping the words. "There's no wall big enough."  
  
"Ryan. _Ryan_ , look at me. I feel responsible for this; so does Ashlee, so does Gabe. We're not going to abandon you." Pete smiled. "Between us we've had about seventy years' worth of experience being human. I'm sure we can give you some pointers. Avoid racism, debt and getting behind little old ladies in lines, for starters."   
  
"I don't even know - what's an inline?"  
  
"Ah," said Pete, "you will have a long time to appreciate the joy of those." He hopped off the chair and dragged closer the box that Gabe had been carrying earlier. "This is for you."  
  
Ryan's fingers proved unequal to the task of breaking through the layers of tape and cardboard, so Pete was obliged to run to the kitchen and fetch a variety of cutting devices, most of which they discarded in the battle with the wrapping. At long last, the styrofoam-covered object inside was set free. Ryan knocked the shells aside to reveal a gleaming white machine.  
  
"What is it?" he breathed.  
  
"A Singer Futura." Pete beamed proudly. At Ryan's lack of enlightenment, he added, "It's a sewing machine. That stuff you do with a needle is amazing, but this is easier, and _faster_. Plus, the lady at the store told me there's all kinds of things you can do with it that you can't with ordinary sewing. I ... don't really know, she lost me after embroidery."  
  
"I saw one of these once," said Ryan. "Old Man Wentz left on the Shopping Channel when he fell asleep."  
  
"There's an instruction manual." Pete rummaged around in the debris of the packaging. "Pretty much looks like gibberish crossed with Dutch, but, you know. You've got time to translate it."  
  
"I don't know how to thank you," said Ryan.  
  
"Don't," said Pete. "This is my way of apologising to you." He stood up and brushed off his jeans. "Listen, I've gotta get back to the lab. Gabe is freaking out, he's about to go on another bender and there's a lot of fragile glass here. If you hear a lot of shouting later on, just ignore it, 'kay? Gabe gets pretty ... decibel friendly with the need to tell everyone how much he loves stars and shit."  
  
"And William," said Ryan, half-engrossed in a page that told him about the programmable needles. He barely saw Pete start.  
  
"Yeah," said Pete, softly, after a moment. "Anyway, catch you later. Ashlee's at her sister's for the day. Next thing I'm gonna get you is a cell, but you'll be okay for a few hours, right?"  
  
"Huh?" Ryan looked up from a diagram on hooping his fabric. "Oh, sure."  
  
"Take care of yourself," said Pete, and it sounded a bit like a warning. A warning too late, Ryan thought. He carried the sewing machine upstairs and lost himself in it. It was a vastly superior alternative to thinking.  
  
+_+_+  
  
Ryan fell asleep after stepping back from the sewing machine and collapsing on to his bed. He was indeed woken by shouting - it sounded like Pete remonstrating with Gabe, who was gaily singing 'Smash, smash, smash!' But sleep was a sucking vortex dragging him back in, so he wasn't sure if it was minutes or hours later that he woke again. This time all was quiet, and it took a few seconds for Ryan to realise what had woken him. It was the odd, creepy sensation of being watched. Also, someone was stroking his hair.  
  
Ryan had been having a lovely dream - vague as hell, but lovely. The hair-stroking seemed more of the same. He let a pleased little noise slip from between his lips.   
  
"Wake up," said a familiar voice softly.   
  
"Mmm," mumbled Ryan. "Brendon? Where are you?"  
  
"I'm right here." Brendon's hand stilled on Ryan's hair, except for his thumb, which was rubbing circles into Ryan's temple. Ryan woke up a little more and started to feel confused. How could Brendon be - was he small again? Had the humans been a terrible dream?  
  
"What," Ryan swallowed, "what are you doing?"  
  
"Are you awake yet?" said Brendon, for an answer. "I have something to show you."  
  
"Umph," was Ryan's reply. The bedsprings chinked as Brendon got off the bed - and wait, that made no sense - Ryan sat up, scratching his eyes. Brendon was standing in a shaft of moonlight, wearing an over-large button-down shirt and grey boxers. He was the most beautiful thing Ryan had ever seen. And he was human-sized.  
  
"What the fuck?" whispered Ryan, scared out of his mind. "No, what the fuck? Brendon. _No_. I'm dreaming, right?"  
  
"I hope it's a good dream." Brendon's smile twitched on and off. He bent his head to begin undoing buttons. His hair fell into his eyes and Ryan could see that he was biting his lip. Buttons required concentration, he knew from experience. But you only undid buttons to take things off -  
  
Brendon yanked out the last remaining buttons and tried to shrug off the shirt. It got stuck at his wrists; with a growl, he shook his hands free. Meanwhile, a thick band of heat was burning its way down Ryan's belly. If Brendon was doing what Ryan thought he was doing - but why was Brendon doing that? - it didn't feel like it did with William, and Brendon was clumsily crawling on to the bed, knocking his knees against Ryan's until he was sitting on Ryan's thighs. Effectively trapping him, but Ryan barely noticed.  
  
"I don't know how to work these," whispered Brendon. He held out his wrists, swathed in pale blue and white stripes. His hands were shaking slightly, and his chest rose and fell too rapidly to be normal. Ryan pushed Brendon's hands aside and struggled to sit upright.   
  
"I don't understand," he said helplessly.  
  
"Okay," said Brendon, sighing a little, as if in annoyance at Ryan's obtuseness, "I'm not sure, though, what -" He leaned forward, not very gracefully, and pressed his lips to the delicate skin crossing Ryan's jaw. Ryan gasped in shock and - something else. Brendon laughed a little breathlessly and did it again, his lips clinging for longer this time.   
  
Ryan curled his hand around Brendon's face, intending to push him away. It didn't quite work out as planned, because Brendon chose that moment to dart his tongue against the spot he'd kissed. Ryan's hips jerked up beneath Brendon's.  
  
"Brendon -"  
  
"No." Brendon lifted his head, only to drop his mouth on to Ryan's in a crushing, almost painful kiss. It lasted barely a second, but Brendon was panting when he drew away. Ryan stared at him, eyes big and wondering. "You don't get to - not let me do this, when you did it with him and - and who is he, anyway? If I thought you'd let me I'd have done it the first week, the first _day_."  
  
"I didn't - I didn't let him," said Ryan. "I wasn't expecting - but why did you make yourself bigger? It's permanent! Pete only told me last night. I can never go back, and now you can't either."  
  
Brendon lifted one shoulder, a half-hearted shrug. "So? I don't want to be there if you're not."  
  
Ryan grabbed Brendon's elbows for something to hold on to. But Brendon took the gesture differently, because he smiled and laid himself gently across Ryan's body, nuzzling his lips against Ryan's ear. His leg slid over Ryan until he was pinned and claimed in all directions, Brendon's breath tickling his neck and his fingertips brushing Ryan's face like it was the first thing he'd ever touched.   
  
"Brendon?" Ryan tried, but it was too late. Brendon was asleep. Ryan smoothed the hair out of his face, trailing his fingers through the knotted silk strands, and smiled till it hurt.  
  
+_+_+  
  
Ryan woke overheated, from a double whammy of beery sunshine pouring on to his head and Brendon's slack weight across him, atop him and probably under him too, if the bump below his shoulder blades was Brendon's arm. Brendon was snuffling into Ryan's neck, which was damp all down one side. And _something_ \- something hard - was poking insistently into Ryan's hip.   
  
Ryan tried to push Brendon off, but Brendon just made a noise of discontent and burrowed closer. The arm buried beneath Ryan wriggled further around until Brendon was clutching him around the middle. One of his legs was thrown across Ryan's thighs.   
  
Ryan turned his eyes - about the only things that weren't being in some way held down - to discover what exactly was poking him. He could see the swell of Brendon's arm muscles - a lot prettier this size, and this close - a ruch of fabric slipping down from where it was still trapped about Brendon's wrists, Brendon's bellybutton, some pink sheet lines across his stomach, and his boxers, which were tenting in the middle.  
  
" _Brendon_!" Ryan began pushing in earnest, alarmed and aroused and alarmed at being aroused.   
  
"Whaaaat," mumbled Brendon. He dug his forehead against Ryan's chin. Ryan refused to find it adorable.   
  
"Your - your _thing_ is digging me in the side!" Ryan did not shriek; that is what he liked to think.   
  
The little wet spluttering noises, Ryan eventually deduced, were Brendon laughing and trying to stifle it in Ryan's neck. At last, Brendon raised his head, hair all tousled and eyes warm and sleepy. Ryan felt heat suffuse his skin, tightening and drawing it up, but he ignored it.   
  
"It does that every morning," he said. "Doesn't yours? It goes away after a while."  
  
Ryan blushed. Hard. "Yeah, but - I can _feel_ it."  
  
"Oh - sorry." The sheets rustled as Brendon scrunched around a bit. Ryan levered himself up to give Brendon room. They ended up face to face. Brendon's hand settled on Ryan's waist, tapping a beat on the bare skin under his t-shirt. Ryan couldn't meet Brendon's eyes, so he focused on the cleft of his chin, the little pulse bouncing near his jaw.  
  
"Ryan, I -" Brendon was panting a little, which made Ryan blush harder; he didn't know why. "I wanna kiss you."  
  
"Yeah?" The heat in Ryan's cheeks ran through his brain; he had to close his eyes in need and embarrassment. Hotter and hotter, until he realised it wasn't all in his head, that Brendon's hot, chapped lips were pressed against his, unmoving. Ryan half-gasped, parting his lips in surprise. Brendon took that for permission, because he pressed in harder. So hard, in fact, that Ryan's teeth were smashed against his inner lip. He let out a mewl of pain.  
  
"Sorry, sorry." Brendon ripped his mouth away, which wasn't what Ryan wanted _at all_. "I don't know how - I'm sorry."  
  
"Shh." Drilling up courage from he didn't know where, Ryan slotted his hands either side of Brendon's face and pulled him back in. He let Brendon's lips touch his gently and rubbed them together, until they were slightly wet and sticky and everything moulded together more smoothly. Ryan remembered William doing something with his tongue, so he let his bottom lip fall open and just touched the tip of his tongue to the corner of Brendon's mouth. Brendon let out a gasp and licked back at Ryan's mouth.   
  
Their tongues met in the middle, rough-warm and shocking. Brendon scrabbled at Ryan's side, pulling him closer, and like that his dick was jabbing at Ryan again. He didn't mind so much now, because it was sliding into the soft join between his thigh and his belly. Plus, his own dick was sort of trapped against Brendon's belly, which was firm and hard and Ryan was rocking up against it before he knew what he was doing.  
  
Brendon broke the kiss and stared down at him, his cheeks all pink. "Ryan," he breathed.   
  
"Sorry," said Ryan, but his hips were still rolling up and his hand moved to grip Brendon's hip, get a better angle.   
  
"Can I - move?" whispered Brendon.   
  
Ryan bit his lip and nodded, overcome. It was intense and sort of humiliating: the ragged noises from deep in his throat, the helpless thrusts that Brendon was meeting with even greater urgency. Brendon's mouth found his again, sloppy and awkward, his stubble grazing Ryan's cheek as their movements grew more frantic. Ryan's hand fell from Brendon's hip to his ass, squeezing in, because no one alive could resist that temptation. Brendon gasped and stopped moving; a second later, hot wetness seeped through to Ryan's dick. He felt he should be pissed off about it, but in fact his thighs clenched and his fingers dug into Brendon's flesh and he came too.  
  
"Oh," said Brendon. "Ryan. Ryan."  
  
"Shut up," mumbled Ryan. He belied his words with a swipe to Brendon's cheek, rubbing his palm across the tiny hairs and curling around the curve of his skull to drag him down again. Ryan could hear the sounds of their kissing now, outside of the hotwetslick feeling of it - tiny tucks and 'uhs' and guttering moans. Which was, of course, when Pete burst into the room.  
  
"Ryan, where's Brendon, there's been a terrible - oh god." Pete covered his eyes, but almost immediately snapped open two fingers to peek through. "Seriously, guys? Seriously?"  
  
Ryan couldn't speak. Brendon was laughing, hugging Ryan's neck and pressing his face to Brendon's collarbone as if he understood and was trying to hide Ryan's humiliation.   
  
"We're kind of busy," said Brendon.  
  
"You are _getting jiggy_ in my spare-room bed," said Pete. "I'm so glad I taught Ryan to use the washing machine. So glad."  
  
"We could maybe get jiggy again if you left," Brendon suggested.  
  
"But, B," said Pete, "Gabe's about going mad downstairs. He said you coerced him while drunk and then he smashed the machine to bits, so any chance either of you had of turning back is completely gone -" Ryan stiffened. Brendon felt it, and hugged tighter. "- Why did you do it?"  
  
"Ryan was alone," said Brendon. "And - and I saw him with William, and - he's mine, all right? He's mine, and I was losing him all the time and if I stayed small I'd lose him forever. That's all."  
  
"You're crazy," said Pete, but Ryan looked up in time to see his face. It was as if Brendon had told him where to find a unicorn.  
  
"I don't know if we can survive being human," said Ryan softly.  
  
"I don't either," said Pete. "I just wake up every day and see how it goes. You'll catch on quick."  
  
+_+_+  
  
"Brendon!" yelled Ryan. "I think I'm finished!"  
  
Brendon thundered up the stairs. As a Borrower, he could do nothing quietly; as a human, he revelled in making as much noise as possible. Even in bed, but Ryan was learning to deal with that. The secondary benefits were enormous.  
  
Brendon collapsed across Ryan's shoulders and looked at the screen. Ryan had got the hang of typing quickly, while Brendon still picked out sentences with one finger and got bored after two. "That looks amazing," said Brendon. "So when will you make your first million and keep me in the lap of luxury?"  
  
Sometimes, Ryan worried about the way Brendon fixated on really weird human ideas. "In three thousand and four years," he said. "If I can make enough to cover bills, we'll be doing well."  
  
Brendon jumped off Ryan's shoulders and twirled around the room. Ashlee taking him to dance class had been an inspired move; the instructor was already talking about hiring him to teach kids. Pete was more excited about what Brendon could do with a guitar - how he could accompany his made-up songs almost without thinking.   
  
A sound of scuffling came from the sideboard and a second later Spencer and Jon tumbled on to the carpet. Hayley was still too scared to come out in front of the humans, no matter how many times Spencer explained that Brendon and Ryan weren't; but his family and Jon's friends, who had all moved over, didn't mind as long as they got beer or food or Ryan's handmade clothes out of it.  
  
"How are the renovations coming?" asked Ryan.  
  
"Tom about died when Gabe gave him that little soldered hammer," said Jon exultingly. "The walls are gonna be so good when they're done, you guys. You won't believe your eyes."  
  
Ryan and Brendon exchanged a look. Brendon squeezed Ryan's shoulder as Jon went on unheedingly. "He also said Pete promised him Borrower-sized Clan t-shirts. You up for that?"  
  
"Sure," said Ryan. Pete's line of Ryan's designs was doing extremely well; it wasn't the first time the Borrowers had asked for copies. In fact, that was where Pete had got his idea for Ryan's mini-business in speciality doll-wear. The computer pinged. "Hang on, I've got an email."  
  
"Wow, already?" said Brendon.  
  
"It's probably just Pete," said Ryan, rolling his eyes.   
  
It wasn't. The body of the email contained a mailing address, the sight of which made Brendon curl up into himself. He still did that sometimes, especially when there were ads for toys on TV.   
  
"Is this -" Ryan gestured at the screen, but his eyes were on Brendon. Who nodded, stiffly, once.  
  
"Yeah," he said, "it is."  
  
+_+_+  
  
Mrs Hughes hated people who rang doorbells. She preferred knocking, which was less insistent, and no one ever slammed their fist against a door the way they'd lean on a doorbell. But her daughter-in-law had insisted. "You can't live without modern appliances, Ma," she'd said. Mrs Hughes felt like telling Alma she wasn't her mother and, thank the lord, never had been, but Alma had Marv under her thumb. Alma would stop her seeing the grandchildren if Mrs Hughes made waves, because Marv had the spine of a dead meercat.  
  
So she was well-disposed to whoever was at the door, because they knocked ever so quietly. As she shuffled towards the porch, she could see two faint shapes outside it. They were arguing; she could tell by the cant of their heads and the pitch of the conversation.   
  
"- said we should press this button," said the dark-haired one as she opened the door.  
  
"Hello, boys." Mrs Hughes smiled. She'd heard about gays from Alma, who thought they should all be horse-whipped into heterosexual submission. Mrs Hughes thought a woman who looked as much like a man as Alma did shouldn't be so hasty in wishing for such a thing. The boys had clearly just been holding hands, because they were standing too close and the little one was turned towards the other like a sunflower reaching for light. "What can I do for you?"  
  
The tall, curly-haired one looked down at his companion, whose lower lip was disappearing between his teeth. He reached for the dark-haired boy's hand and said, "We heard - we were researching on the internet. I know this is a strange request, but - we were hoping we could buy your dollhouse."  
  



End file.
